


The Best Laid Plans

by QuagmireQueen



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Asgardian Liquor, Asgardian Soap Opera, But they're working through it together, Canon Divergence - Thor (2011), Everyone Needs A Hug Actually, Feelings, FrostIron - Freeform, I think there's an actual plot now, Loki (Marvel) Has Issues, Loki (Marvel) Needs a Hug, M/M, Magic and Science, Odin (Marvel)'s Parenting, Slow Burn, Snark, Thor's Hammer - Freeform, Time Travel, Tony Stark Has A Heart, so does tony
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-08
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2019-05-19 21:54:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 41,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14881910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuagmireQueen/pseuds/QuagmireQueen
Summary: On the eve of Thor's coronation a strange man crashes through the ceiling clad in an armour of red and gold.(A tale wherein Destiny refuses to be tamed by Loki Liesmith, but it may just turn out for the best)"But Mouse, you are not alone,In proving foresight may be vain:The best laid schemes of mice and menGo often askew,And leave us nothing but grief and pain,For promised joy!"- Robert Burns, 'To a Mouse'





	1. One Way Ticket

**Author's Note:**

> This was a spur of the moment thing and an idea I had many years ago, I do hope I manage to continue and maybe even finish it at some point. Basically this fic was born long before Thor Ragnarok and even before Civil War, so these are not subjects that I touch on at all throughout (well, maybe a bit for inspiration), though the kind-of, sort-of AU should be very easy to jump into.
> 
> I like my time-travel sensible. I love my snarky, intelligent men having a go at each other with word-knives before the sexual tension blows through the roof. Mostly I just want Tony and Loki to fix their unlucky messed up lives because they both always wanted to do good and went about it the wrong way sometimes and damn if they deserve a chance to smooth out each others' kinks.

“What is the meaning of this?” Odin’s voice booms through the hall like an impending doom as the figure on the floor moans.

Loki’s heart is pounding and he’s not quite certain whether it’s fear or exhilaration or both. He can feel wisps of magic twisting in the air, an aftershock of the event. He breathes it in, deeply, and knows that something about the spell is… _compatible_ and knows at once that it is important.

The stranger groans and attempts to sit up. In the blink of an eye, Hogun and Sif are holding a sword to his throat. A glance around the hall shows Fandral’s arrow set nimbly on the taunt string of his bow and Volstagg’s giant frame turned with concentration, ready to charge. Half the hall have unsheathed their weapons and the air quivers palpably. Loki’s fingers tense.

“Well shit.”

The stranger eyes the sword with distaste before his dazed eyes scan the entirety of the scene that his appearance has caused. He blinks and suddenly his gaze is locked with Thor’s. Loki can tell that his brother feels it too: the inescapability of _fate_.

“Thor! My old buddy, old—“ at this the man attempts shoving the swords away only to be roughly pinned down “—whoa—pal. When did you start having parties that I’m not invited to? And for that matter, since when is it your psycho evil brother’s job to force me to attend?”

“What do you speak of?”

Thor looks more confused than menacing, but like any beast, the confusion is visibly giving way to anger the longer he lacks explanation.

Loki moves closer, quietly, his eyes devouring the scene with barely hidden curiosity. He can now make out most of the shape of the man on the floor: he is dressed in a curious full-body armor, bright red and gold and like nothing he’s ever seen before. There is a wild, untamed intelligence in his eyes, something Loki recognises - the man is clearly working through a million different options in his head right now and Loki intuitively feels that half of them would be an absolute delight to witness playing out. He should be cautious with this strange creature.

That’s the moment when their eyes meet.

“Loki.” The man’s eyes narrow as he tenses, still unable to move under the watchful and armed care of Sif and the Warriors Three. “Not that I don’t appreciate the breathing room but what the hell did you just do to us?”

And suddenly the entire hall has its eyes trained on the Trickster. Loki freezes, uncertain as to how to react. Whatever has happened, it’s now very much his problem and that’s the last thing he wants to worry about on a night like tonight when he already has the Jotuns on their way.

It is a complication that will have to be dealt with.

“Me?” he asks indignantly. “It is _you_ who has crashed in the Great Halls of Odin on the night of my brother’s coronation, most likely to sabotage the entire event. I understand you mean to pawn off the blame of your foiled attempt on me as the most powerful magic user in the room with the least trust placed in them, but it will do you very little good once we pull the real story out through of your pathetic lips in the dungeons.”

“Aye, do not speak to my brother in such tones.” Thor growls. “We will have you chained up immediately. Guards!”

“No, no, nononono _no_!” the man finally begins to show his panic. Loki steps back, his fingers twitching to do _something_ , although he is not quite certain what it is. It must be the last of the magic from the stranger’s materialization. However, Loki is not so foolish as to implicate himself further in a crime that he, possibly for the very first time ever, has no hand in committing. “Thor! Come on, Point Break, you know who I am! Tony Stark, Man of Iron and all that, the guy that spent years fighting that war criminal over there right alongside you! We saved the goddamn world together like, more than twice! Even if one of those times the world only needed saving because of-- ”

The man, apparently known as Tony Stark, is silenced by Odin before he can complete the sentence. The Allfather knocks him out cold with a sleeping spell and motions to the guards to take care of the rest. No one pays much attention to his words. Loki does.

 _War criminal_. Tony Stark had looked right at him as he’d spoken those words. He watches the anomaly get dragged away and closes his eyes.

There is something at play here, something greater than a mere attempt at sabotaging Thor's coronation. Loki feels an almost primal instinct to follow the strange man down to the dungeons immediately and he has to physically quell his shaking.

His gut continues to twist even as he senses the small group of Jotuns he’s led into the great vaults finally make their presence known. Odin freezes, whispering ‘ _Frost-giants’_ before bringing his staff down once, with purpose, and Loki knows that they are vaporised by the Destroyer. The ceremony is put on hold as a furious Thor stomps away.

A sudden wave of realisation hits him.

_By the Norns, those idiots will think it’s Tony Stark that brought the Jotuns._

His plan is in shambles. If Thor is distracted by the strange intruder whom they already have locked in the vaults then there is no way he’ll attack Jotunheim and Loki will never expose him for the buffoonish brute that he really is. He will have to deal with the self-proclaimed Man of Iron somehow, and soon.

“Allfather,” he turns to face Odin. “I wish to speak to this Tony Stark. His accusations are not light and I desire to understand what his particular grievance with me is. I am the first to admit that I have perhaps, on occasion, just _slightly_ insulted many a creature in the Nine Realms. Perhaps we can come to some sort of understanding.”

Odin is silent for a few moments as he stares into the distance. Loki feels dread begin to creep up his spine as his father finally turns to look at his face and gives a small, sad smile.

“Loki, you were not the only one to listen to the proclamations of this Tony Stark, nor were you the only one to sense the resonance of his magic- or rather, the magic that delivered him here. I would trust you, my son, to speak with this stranger. I do not know, however, what version of my son would return to me.”

Odin sighs deeply as he looks back up as though searching for some distant light only he can see. “Perhaps I have been too cowardly for too long- today has surely proven this. Both of my sons suffer the consequences of my own foolishness and I suppose I will suffer all the more for the things I’ve done to bring this about.”

Loki listens and the pooling dread in his gut deepens. He is no longer certain about what Odin means with his words and it is not a position he’s found himself in for many a century. There is a sadness lurking in the depths of the Allfather’s eyes that Loki’s never witnessed before and he shrinks back, immediately unsettled by it.

“What do you mean?” he asks, but Odin shakes his head.

“Nothing, the ramblings of an old man who has a long life of mistakes to live with.” He turns again to Loki and the sadness is gone, the Allfather’s face a stone mask. “Go. Talk to him. I will console Thor and keep him away from the prisoner for some time. I trust you to find your own truths.”

Loki is loathe to let Odin speak to Thor about the incident before he gets the chance to incite his brother’s impulsiveness, but the curiosity he feels in finding out more about their guest as well as the sudden change in his father’s behavior are enough to make him reconsider. After all, he’s managed to delay Thor’s coronation for a while, perhaps a different scheme might yet prove to Odin how unfit his golden brother is for the crown.

Loki smirks to himself. It shouldn’t be too difficult to come up with something.

///

Tony is _royally_ fucked, right up there with Her Highness the Queen of England and Odin the Allfather himself. One moment he’s battling it out against Loki with the Avengers- well, most of them, plus a very disgruntled Stephen Strange- the next he’s being blasted through some titanium-grade gold-plated ceiling, suit and FRIDAY offline, right into the middle of some Viking-esque futuristic soiree.

Before he gets the chance to find his bearings, it’s all swords and arrows and - damn, the suit's weighing him down instead of helping right now - but he keeps it on because at the very least it’s some protection against all the sharp and pointy things being thrust in his face.

Then he sees Thor.

And God (pun strictly intended) if it isn’t a relief to have a friendly face around because seriously, of all the messed up things to happen to him during his lifetime, this was the most ridiculous: landing in what he’d quickly surmised to be Asgard, a different goddamn _planet_  when moments ago he’d been in Barcelona. At least during the wormhole incident there had been some semblance of spacetime logic if one were to accept the premise of wormholes in space.

Everything after Thor stops making sense. Not only does the Asgardian bodybuilder not recognize him, but right there in the hall is Loki the very man they’d just been trying to contain. And he’s all calm and, well, sane-looking. Tony remembers the reason the Avengers (minus Hulk who was still AWOL post-Ultron) and Strange had all converged on the European tourist-trap. Apparently the presumed-dead Loki was suddenly not dead and making a deity-sized ruckus in the most public place with the most potential civilian casualties since New York.

Thor cried before suiting up, the big softie.

To be fair, Loki definitely seemed… off, even before Tony’s new predicament. Nothing the trickster did after the team got there seemed to have a point or purpose- he didn’t even speak and that was _definitely_ new. The Loki Tony remembered was a diva of the highest caliber, taking every opportunity to taunt and smirk at anyone standing in front of him. This time he'd fired off a couple of magical blasts at them, tossed a few daggers and generally teleported around willy-nilly for a few minutes before... well the grandest gesture he made was blasting a hole in the church. Which is precisely why Tony had ended up busy sweating the real hero-sweat in order to prop it up and then-

And then he remembers seeing a blast of green light and maybe… was there a weird whisper he heard? Strange had definitely yelled at him through the comms just before the whole world went batshit, but it was such a blur that he couldn’t be sure what the words were. All he knows is that suddenly he was hurtling through the ether and then crashing down, miraculously still alive. And _then_ getting arrested by Odin- of all things- after being ghosted by his supernatural teammate.

Thor’s lack of recognition definitely stung, but somehow Tony feels it was genuine.

The strangest thing is that Loki’s words in the hall seemed genuine too.

_Did I just crash Thor’s coronation party?_

And now, five minutes after waking up in some weird version of Asgardian prison- a bright white box with frankly luxurious-looking décor and a window that Tony had assumed to be thin air until he’d been blasted backwards after trying to touch it- he's nowhere closer to figuring out what had happened. Worse: the whole place is rigged with magical mumbo-jumbo that he hasn't yet worked out and it lowers his chances of being able to make a break for it. He's simultaneously fascinated and annoyed by it. 

Tony sighs, finally disassembling the suit using the switches he’d installed in case of events like this. It’s still quiet, the lack of Fri’s constant companionable nattering like a punch in the gut. He’s already made peace with losing JARVIS, barely, and having a second voice go silent is almost traumatic. At least this time it’s less permanent and more of a different-realm-different-rules kind of thing. Hopefully his AI is alive and well back on Earth.

The Mark IX pieces tumble to the ground, dead without the energy required to assemble them into a shape of any sort. Tony could do it by hand but he's exhausted, despite the fake sleep he’d been put into in order to be transported to his dungeon. He has no idea how much time has passed since he’d tumbled into Odin’s great hall, but he guesses it’s not much based on how sore his muscles and bruises are: not the hours-later kind of soreness, more like the just-got-thrown-through-a-ceiling kind of soreness.

He needs to figure out where he is and what is going on. The whole Asgard thing seems a given, but nothing makes sense right now so Tony's not planning to jump to any conclusions. There's a niggling in his mind and it says: _that Thor, the one you just saw? Yeah, he's like Norse God thing you had a fight with once, remember? He was all: 'This is beyond you, metal man', as if he was some higher being which, okay, he was. But the point is, he's like that again, all 'stuck-up princeling' Thor, not 'Best buddy to have a drinking contest with' Thor._

And Tony feels in his gut that not only did he travel to Asgard, but at best he’s travelled through time and at worst he’s in a whole different reality.

Or he could just be knocked out and dreaming the whole thing up. That would be the preferred option.

Then Tony feels a sudden chill run down his spine. 

“Hello, Tony Stark, Man of Iron.”

He looks up, meeting the blue-green eyes of Loki Odinsson.


	2. Visitors

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm going to give it a good go at continuing this- the plot is starting to intrigue me as much as you guys! That can only be a good thing I hope.
> 
> I wanted to thank you all for the comments, they are always an incentive and a motivator to continue writing, knowing that people out there are curious about the story! If you ever find anything concrete to give feedback on, I'm also more than happy to hear it.

“Loki.”

Stark narrows his eyes at the God from his perch on the bed. For a moment, both men partake in a quick and quiet calculation, eyeing each other head to toe with undisguised curiosity and no small amount of hostility. Loki retains his caution- after all, the intruder apparently knows his name while he knows absolutely nothing about this Man of Iron.

Stark (Loki wonders why that particular part of the man’s name feels the most fitting to use in reference, but does not question it) has rid himself of the extravagant armour and now appears far smaller and more vulnerable than before, though he does have a muscular build- a warrior or a blacksmith, going by his rough hands and multitudes of scars. His clothes are peculiar- a short-sleeved grey tunic that stops at the waist and dark blue trousers made of a material that’s not something he’s seen much before. Loki finds himself rummaging through his memory trying to remember where he’d last witnessed during his travels through the nine realms but comes up blank.

The silence stretches for a moment longer before Stark groans and leans his head back against the wall, his eyes closed.

“It’s _Iron Man_ , not Man of Iron. Since you guys apparently don’t know jack about me for the moment, might as well get that out of the way first. Your brother likes his English a little last millennium, so I figured it’d help. Funny how you’re this advanced alien Viking race but you still talk like you’re auditioning for a part in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

Loki’s perplexed by the odd comment but Stark has given away more than he might have intended. ‘Vikings’ is a word he’s only ever heard on Midgard, meaning the man is probably one of those worthless mortal rodents. Loki cannot remember the last time he visited the human planet, although that is largely due to the lack of absolutely anything of value or interest to him there. It is by far the weakest of realms with the most weak-minded individuals.

“You claim to know myself and Thor,” he says, his words measured. “Yet I cannot recall us ever having been introduced. I would be tempted to call you a liar if I were not such a good one myself; I can tell you’re honest or at least believe you are. So tell me, how is it that you think we came to know each other?”

Stark looks up, his gaze suddenly serious. He’s silent for a moment, wringing his hands and considering his answer, an inner battle that’s visible only in the darkness of his irises. Finally, he flashes a wry smile.

“You made a great big hole in the sky in order to take over my planet. And I don’t like it when people touch my stuff. It could only be downhill from there”

“Hole in the—“

“Your brother was kind enough to help us out in closing said hole and apprehending you before you summoned a fire demon or something- I don’t know what it is you supervillains like to do in your spare time. But anyway that’s sort of not the point because obviously you haven’t done any of that, otherwise you’d be gloating about how you got me locked up and out of the way but instead you’re here asking questions. And I have some of my own.”

Loki is sorely tempted to intercede but he is suddenly very curious about what the mortal has to say. The conversation is definitely not going anywhere near what he’d imagined, so he inclines his head: _continue_.

“First: am I in Asgard?”

“Considering you landed in the bosom of Odin’s great halls, I would hope you had been aware of the fact.”

The mortal smirks. He _smirks_ at Loki.

“Didn’t really get to choose the destination. If I had, I might have picked Bali or something. I know a little place where they do a mean Sex on the Beach." he winks. "And bosom sounds almost dirty, didn’t know you had it in you, Lokes.”

The demigod is genuinely impressed by his sheer confidence. Nothing about his situation demands the easy manner with which Stark dishes out quips in the face of an overpowering enemy. 

“Anyway, question number two: have you ever considered conquering a little place called planet Earth?”

 _Ah, so it **is** Midgard_. Loki allows himself a smirk of his own.

“I am not interested in subjugating worlds. You should inquire after my golden brother for war-waging tactics. And if I were to one day choose a realm to rule, it should not be one as pathetic and useless as Midgard.” _In fact I’d settle for no less than Asgard itself, if only fate had not willed it otherwise_ , he adds to himself, the bitterness of the coronation and Thor’s obvious lack of credibility as king still eating away at his thoughts.

“Alright then. Alright.” Stark breathes deeply, his eyes casting around the room. He buries his face in his hands. “Damn. None of this makes any sense.”

“If you do not have anything further to—“ Loki begins, but Stark’s head suddenly shoots up.

“What about Thor?”

“What of my half-brained, hammer-brandishing brother?”

“Brother.” Stark repeats. “That’s right, you still—nevermind. Just wondering if-”

Before the mortal can finish his sentence he freezes momentarily, his eyes rolling back into his skull in a frightening display. Loki rushes forward. He does not have the power to undo the locks to get into the cell. _At least not quickly enough_. However, before he can think of what to do next he sees something that stops him dead.

Like a ghostly apparition, his own face stares back at him instead of Stark’s, eyes burning deep green like sapphires, too bright, too _raw_ to be his own magic. The air crackles with static power. Loki’s hairs stand on end and he can almost see green snakes of energy crawling around inside the cell and on his own arms. It feels like the room is suddenly full, like he’s drowning in an invisible ether, sinking into a black hole of suffocating depth.

He cannot tear his eyes away from his doppelganger. As he watches, the phantom opens its mouth and forms the word…

 _Brother_.

Clearly, unmistakeably, although not a sound is made.

Loki shivers and reaches out, forgetting entirely about the cell wall until he is millimetres away from touching it. He pulls back his hand as the apparition curls its lip. Before he can comprehend what’s happening, the tips of his fingers turn a dark, midnight blue. The colour flows quickly down his entire arm covering his skin, like ink spreading through water. Loki panics and jumps back, but the discoloration stops at his elbow and he watches with morbid curiosity as strange and intricate markings, tattoo-like, carve their way through the now-blue tint. He tries to prod it with his unmarked hand, only to find that it’s cold to the touch. Not just cold,  _freezing_ , as though encased in ice.

 _These are Jotun markings_.

Loki’s more familiar with the culture of Asgard’s great enemy than he’d like to be, having spent months planning Thor’s coronation coup. He can sense that the energy coursing through him, particularly through his tinted arm, is the same as that of Iron Man’s crash earlier. Except now he can make out an undercurrent he hadn’t noticed before, like white light splitting into its components. There is Asgardian magic here, strong and bright, but also Jotun ice and wind sprinkled throughout.

There is something else, too... something powerful and foreign that Loki cannot put his finger on yet no matter how hard he tries. In his mind it shines with bright, opulent green.

When he looks up the ghost is gone and only Stark’s pale visage is visible. The mortal collapses onto the bed like a ragdoll, smacking his head into the wall with a resounding thud. Loki glances back down at his arm, where the blue recedes as quickly as it appeared, snaking up to the tips of his fingers before blinking away as though absorbed into them. He feels sudden, immense relief, releasing a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding throughout the ordeal.

“Stark!” he barks at the unconscious figure, but it does not stir.

Loki considers requesting Odin to let him into the cell or perhaps attempting to unravel the locks himself, but seeing the man’s steady breath he decides against it. There are more pertinent matters to attend to and he plans to return to Tony Stark as soon as he’s figured them out.

Mother… he must speak with Frigga. She would surely offer him answers, being the mage that taught him all that he knows. He again feels a strange instinct, an indescribable feeling telling him that it is _she_ he must seek out. He thinks of the searing green eyes of the apparition and feels a shiver run down his spine. There is something at hand here, a path set in motion that Loki feels he must follow, a sense of desperation.

And Tony Stark appears to be the key.

///

When Tony wakes up he’s alone and his head feels like it’s had an unfortunate encounter with Thor’s hammer. He looks around, noticing that Loki’s gone and closes his eyes, letting out a groan and struggling to remember what happened.

_Did Loki knock me out?_

That doesn’t make any sense. While his memories are a little fuzzy, he doesn’t recall any moment when the leather-clad God of Mischief might have had a chance or reason to deck him.

 _That crash had better not have given me brain damage_ , he thinks darkly, feeling the back of his head. It’s tender to the touch and he hisses through his teeth at the sudden, flashing pain once his fingers come upon a lump. _That son of a—_

“Tony Stark.”

Tony stops moving. There is an instant, uncontrollable flash of fear that runs through his body at the sound of the voice and he looks up, cautiously, like prey caught in the gaze of a predator.

Odin, Allfather, King of Asgard and God of War and Wisdom is stood before him, inside the cell, his eyes stern and unyielding and yet so unbearably human. Tony recognises the instinct inside him to both run and fall on his knees at the same time and it’s a novel experience for someone like him, who scoffs at authority on a good day and openly scorns it on a bad one. This is no General Ross or Nick Fury, no government or business mogul from back home.

 _Stupid magic and its stupid users he’s just an old crone with one eye and a pet bird_ , he thinks stubbornly, trying to defy the overpowering urge that Odin’s presence induces. Tony has no love for the old man, despite how fondly Thor speaks-- spoke of him. Hearing of the indoctrination that Loki suffered is enough. He can't even imagine the indignity of having your own identity hidden from you your entire life and being taught to hate your own race. In Tony’s humble opinion, that all proves that Odin is the farthest thing from the God of Wisdom he could dream up. Just another deadbeat dad.

“You are an anomaly, Midgardian.” Odin says and it sounds condescending, even if it isn’t.

“Oh, yeah, well, you’re a dick.” Tony shoots back and then immediately realises what he’s said, clamping his mouth shut far too late. He’s annoyed, he’s had a long day of concussions and magic and nothing makes sense but yeah, he still values his life and his damn cheek might have just cost him that.

To his relief, Odin merely chuckles and... yeah, okay, Tony can take being condescended to by the king of Viking Gods over being zapped into nothingness by him. He vows to stay as quiet as he possibly can while the man is within kicking distance of him so as to not incur his likely-eternal wrath.

“You have a destiny intertwined with that of my sons and as such you are of interest to me, Tony Stark. That is the _only_ reason you still breathe. Do not think that I am quite so lenient on others who dare wreak damage in my home and interrupt my son’s coronation.” Odin’s eye meets his and Tony suddenly feels like something large is lodged in his throat. He swallows it down.

“Destiny? Look, Mr. Allfather, Sir, I’m a good friend of Thor’s, I help him polish his hammer when he needs it—no wait, that sounded wrong, I take that back—and while I’m not on the best of terms with his brother, that’s largely due to his trying to forcefully take over my planet, which I think merits at least a small grudge. I don’t even know how I got to Asgard and I’m honestly sorry about the ceiling, I could probably get that fixed up for you in no time once I get my suit running again.”

“You came due to the machinations of Loki,” Odin says, ignoring half of Tony’s babbling tirade (probably for the best). “And the power of the time stone. While I cannot guess the circumstances of your journey, I can sense enough of my son and that powerful, ancient magic that threw you through the temporal aether as well as the message Loki attempted to send me.”

“Message?” Tony perks up because _finally_ , some answers.

“A warning and a promise. I understand that you are here by Loki’s willing and that he wishes to, as I have understood from the sentiment imbued in the spell, _do better_. I do not know why he chose you or what the ultimate outcome of this event will be, which is why I will keep you here, for now. I fear I may have caused my sons undue harm, a dark path that may be too late to correct. So I am willing to not kill you where you stand despite the danger you might bring upon this realm. I will give Loki a chance to prove himself to me. However.”

At this Odin lifts his spear and _how_ did Tony not notice it before, it’s freaking massive and terrifying and hey, look, Odin’s pointing it straight at his chest now that’s just great. It suddenly seems very important to be almost anywhere else but in the path of the big magical spear of doom.

“...if anything about you or the magic coursing through you appears to be a threat to my home and my family and my people, I will not hesitate to strike you down.”

Tony nods slightly, his eyes still trained on the ridiculously sharp end of the sharp magical stick.

“Duly noted.” He stammers out and Odin nods, pulling the spear back and giving a small, intimidating smile.

“Thor calls, but I will return, mortal. We have many things to discuss.”

With this, Odin disappears.


	3. Birth Right

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm currently doing ridiculous physics and travelling around Southern Asia in my spare time so I apologise for the lack of writing. It gets done at some point. Somehow.
> 
> Thank you for the responses ya beauties.

Frigga is a patient woman. She is a mother of two and a queen, a mage and a politician: all occupations that require the utmost fortitude of character and no small amount of empathy. And Frigga knows when something important is about to occur, particularly when it concerns her wayward sons. _Particularly_ when it concerns Loki. It is a sixth sense- and while many would put it down to her magical abilities, she knows it’s because she’s a mother and mothers _know_.

So after the debacle that prematurely ends Thor’s coronation, she stands back and lets her husband handle their son’s outrage, knowing that her soothing words would do very little in the situation. Thor is a man of action and he needs to vent. Loki however…

“Mother.”

Frigga turns, her heart dropping like a stone to the very floor she stands on. She swallows her frightened, worried expression and masks it with one of calm and care. Again, the powers only a mother can master. Loki stands in the doorway, his gaze expectant, _hungry_ for knowledge like she’d taught him to be.

“You’ve come with questions, Loki. Ones I fear to answer.”

“Fear?” he inclines his head, a shadow of uncertainty ghosting over his features. “The only reason someone fears to answer a question is because they know they will have to speak the truth. And the only reason they fear the truth is because it will hurt those that hear it. Tell me mother, what truths do you fear?”

Frigga closes her eyes, unable to contain the grief that pre-empts her confession. There are no words to make this right, because she knows Loki. And she knows he won’t understand.

“I believe it is time you know the truth I fear _most_ , though Odin will not approve. All I ask before I say any more is that you listen, Loki, and not judge until you’ve heard it all.” she says as Loki looks mutinous but stays silent. Frigga cups his cheek as though she could hold onto him, to stop him from leaving.

“So many years ago, when Odin returned from battle on Jotunheim, with a hole for an eye and an army singing songs of victory, he brought with him a babe- an infant he’d discovered abandoned in the halls of King Laufey.” She feels Loki’s entire frame tense, his eyes widening as they latch onto hers. “He did not tell anyone of the ice-born child, the would-be prince of Jotunheim— anyone but me.”

“ _Laufeyson_ …” Loki whispers and she feels his face lift from her palm so she seizes hold of his hand, gently but firmly. She will not lose this battle so easily.

“Yes. Abandoned to die for his weakness, his small size, by the king of the giants himself.” She nods. “Forsaken but not lost. On that day, I gained a son, and I would protect him with my life as I would any child of mine. Loki, please, forgive us. Forgive _me_ for having kept this from you—“

“Monster.” He interrupts her and she feels him slip from her grasp, backing away across the room. “A _monster_ is all I ever was to him, rescued out of pity… no, to fulfil his political schemes, to be a bargaining chip should the need ever arise.”

“Loki, please listen—“

“ **NO**!” he yells and she feels the icy blast that swirls around her, ghosting over her skin as the force of Loki’s rage barely misses. She looks up and his eyes are full of fear, a wild panic at the realisation that the ice, the cold had come from _him_.”… no. I see now. I understand, mother. I see why I could never be Odin’s successor, why I was looked upon with suspicion my whole life. Odin had his reasons to not kill me, be it pity or politics, but he could never love me or stomach the idea of a Frost Giant sitting on the throne of Asgard.”

Loki’s shaking, his eyes trained on the ground as though he can see an abyss and it is swallowing him whole. Frigga begins to shiver, the temperature in the room dropping quickly as every molecule of air feels like it tenses up. She grits her teeth in resolve.

“Loki, look at me.” She says and her voice is commanding, one she’s only ever used to scold him. His eyes snap up. “You distort Odin’s intentions and you do not even consider mine. I understand anger at having the truth hidden from you- that is not something I can ever justify, but I participated in it because I wanted to protect you from those who would not understand us and _I could not watch your heart break_. But despite the lies, this I would swear to you on mine and my husband’s life: you are our _son_. You are my boy and I loved you as much as Thor every second from the moment you were brought into our halls. Him being first-born is the reason he will sit upon the throne and no other.”

Frigga stops, feeling her emotions spiral and reels them back in. She does not walk towards Loki, watching the storm of his eyes instead and praying feverishly for him to pause, to consider. She knows him well and she trusts his intelligence, if not his emotional stability. He straightens up.

“Who else knows?”

“No one. It was only I that Odin spoke to— of this I am sure.”

Loki pauses for a moment and she can see him wrestling with himself. Frigga itches to walk over and put her arms around him, to protect him from the pain she had caused. He looks up and she sees the faint glimmer of tears in his eyes.

“Why tell me now?”

Frigga sighs.

“That man who crashed into the hall… I could sense your magic permeating through it all- as could you, I suppose. Beyond that, however, I felt Frost Giant cold, the howling winds of Jotunheim and I _knew_. Whatever the reason, it was time for you to be told the truth. It reminded me that no matter how much I may wish otherwise, it is a part of you and always will be.”

Loki is silent for a moment and Frigga feels dread, cold and heavy in the pit of her stomach. But then he looks at her and she sees the jewel of her efforts, a lone tear making its way along his pronounced cheekbone until it disappears at the edge of his face and she sees his gaze soften, if only a little.

“I need time to think.” he says, finally. “Mother, I trust you when you say you care for me, and while I doubt the same for Odin I am willing to at least accept that he has never done anything to directly harm me. Others will not feel that way. Thor—“

“Your brother _adores_ you.” Frigga exclaims, because it is impossible for it to be otherwise. “He has grown up with you, he _knows_ y—“

“He despises the Frost Giants, as he has been taught to, as _I_ have been taught to. As has everyone in Asgard. I do not doubt your sincerity but this is not news I can deal with by simply accepting it. I must speak with Odin.”

Frigga opens her mouth, intent on comforting him once more but then decides against it. The use of her sympathies has run out, so she merely nods and holds out her arms.

Loki stares, unmoving, and Frigga feels tears of her own begin prickling at her eyes. A moment passes, then another and as she’s about to lower her arms and turn away, he steps forward and returns the embrace, quick and short but sincere.

“Thank you.”

Then he walks away without glancing back.

\\\\\

Loki’s mind is in shambles, a broken mirror reflecting his life back at him in distorted fragments. He cannot remember the last time he found it so difficult to think, to formulate a coherent image in his mind.

_I am a monster._

Or is the monster Odin, for making him believe otherwise until Loki one day slammed into the cold steel wall of truth?

_I was a fool._

A fool who’d believed for far too long that he had truly been on a level playing field with Thor, that he had meant something to Odin on par with his golden-haired brother. A fool who’d thought that eliminating Thor would actually give him a chance.

He stumbles to a stop in an empty hallway, his hand slamming against the wall in anger. If he is to believe his mother- and she, at least, he has always trusted to be honest with him- then Odin saved him out of pity. Loki is loathe to see the ruthless old man in such a light but neither can he fault Odin for other reasons he may have taken a child of Laufey: a shrewd political decision, a contingency, a _bargaining chip_. It’s something Loki himself would have done but it _stings_.

He does not need Odin’s pity or his love. But he has been raised as a prince of Asgard and thus he surely can claim Odin’s approval as a successor- he will show them that he is more than ice and wind, beyond just a Jotun oddity.

Loki closes his eyes and focuses his magic, allowing it to slither through the walls to the small scratchings of runes he’s left in each room, searching. He sees it, senses it: Odin is in his chambers and with him is Thor.

He clenches his fists- their conversation would wait a little. Odin is no doubt aware- or will be soon- of Loki’s new knowledge. The old man always knows what goes on in the palace. However, Loki has no great wish to announce his birth right to the hammer-wielding buffoon, not now and perhaps not ever. He will let Thor vent his anger at the interrupted coronation, particularly if it means less suspicion directed at himself.

In the mean time, his thoughts turn to another pertinent matter.

_Tony Stark… it appears as though you and I have a lot to discuss._

He recalls the man’s surprise at hearing that Loki called Thor ‘brother’. _He had known_. It’s precisely at that moment that the ghostly apparition had materialised and taunted Loki with his true skin- skin that Loki now feels thrumming with icy tension. He attempts to call to the shimmering blue, to remove the glamour that his parents have apparently placed on him, but to no avail. The spell is woven deep, deeper than he can focus on without meditation and with his emotions in shambles.

And Loki fears it too: the confirmation of his heritage, his otherness. It's easier to run from something just a little longer than to face it.

So he turns his attention to the dungeons and to the man who had so deliberately thrown Loki’s world into chaos.

\\\\\

Tony is done. He is so done with Asgardians and family dramas and magic and this weird warped universe that he’s in. The moment Odin disappears he all but collapses, his mind and body drained.

“I need coffee.” He groans. “Or whisky. Either one would be pretty damn great right now.”

He falls silent for a moment, eyes closed, but the only response he gets is the absolute lack of anything resembling one.

“Great.” He mutters. “Just great. You know what, I don’t care. I’ll get through this, I’ll get home- I’m _Tony Stark_. You thought it sucks for me to be in a different planet well my own planet is kind of treating me like shit since the whole Ultron thing so I don’t even _care_.”

He thinks of the thousands of innocent lives dropping to their deaths when Ultron- _his_ creation, _his_ burden to bear- lifts a city into the sky. He thinks of the rising enmity between the Avengers and the World Security Council, of the silent whispers that General Ross plans to 'deal with them' soon and what that means. 

He thinks of Pepper- his bedrock, his one safe haven- and he sees the disappointment and anger in her eyes, although the thing that makes his heart twist is the _fear_. She loves him, he knows that much for sure. But she can't handle him. Or his PTSD or the guilt he drags around with him like a chain no matter where he goes. She'd told him as much after the Extremis incident, after he'd fixed her and his own heart- funny metaphor, that. She can be his friend and his CEO but she can't be _with_ him and after weeks of trying to deal with it, Tony's not sure he's managed yet.

He doesn’t try to stop his anger. The lump on his head mixed with his aching body and worn out mind as well as the lack of caffeine or alcohol or anything he could use to distract himself is bringing him to breaking point.

“You know antlers are not a fashion statement!” he yells at no particular wall. “And green is totally not your colour! Okay, well maybe a little, but only because of the eyes. You’re a sick sonofabitch, even I couldn’t come up with this shit. Do you know how much I miss them already?”

At this he feels his throat close up.

“I miss FRIDAY and Rhodey. I miss Pepper so fucking much. I even miss America’s Next Top One-Eyed Spy and his army of Archers.” He sighs. “I miss the team. Probably more than I ever thought I would. I’d kill myself If Cap heard me right now but I need some good old-fashioned hope.”

He picks up the chest plate of the inactive Iron Man armour and turns it around in his hands. It looks to have short-circuited when whatever threw Tony through dimensions... well, threw him through a bunch of dimensions. He might not be able to restore FRIDAY if there’s no link to Earth but he should be able to jolt the circuitry back into action once he’s replaced some of the parts that got burnt out. The next thing he has to do is to negotiate himself some proper tools to get the job done.

“Yeah well, good luck with that.” He mutters to himself.

 _You’re going to need more than luck with this one, Stark,_ says a voice in his head.


	4. Monologuing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a bunch of Tony and Loki being all passive aggressive because let's face it, it was a douchy move on Loki's part to do what he did. I am v sick but that's just incentive to write, so, er, yay!
> 
> Feedback has been lovely for this and I always appreciate more! You guys are amazing <3

"Excuse me?" Tony's voice comes out about two octaves higher than usual because, well, there's a voice in his head and it sounds remarkably like Loki, God of Freaking Mischief.

 _While listening to you verbally abuse your prison wall for another ten minutes would surely be an entertaining notion- if only because I am entertained by the idea of your putrid little mind slowly collapsing in on itself- I have better things to do and very little time to do them in while I’m here, Stark, so I’m afraid I’ll have to jump in_ , says the voice in his head as though nothing about it being there is currently giving Tony a mild heart attack.

“L-Loki?” he stammers out and then, feeling incredibly self-conscious, draws himself up and clears his throat before adding: “I’m really flattered by all the attention I’m getting today but this is a _little_ too up close and personal. And didn’t I just have a chat with you that ended with me passed out on the bed? I’m not really too keen to repeat the experience.”

 _The one you spoke to was Loki Odinsson_ , the voice in his head replies and Tony can almost taste the bitterness with which the words are drenched. It’s like taking a bite of lemon rind. _A name I have not used for myself in many years. I hope that, perhaps, we may yet change that, as well as many other things- if you will continue to be as effective an instrument as you have thus far proven yourself to be, Stark. There is much yet to be done._

“Wait, whoa, let’s backtrack a little here. You mean you’re not the Loki I just talked to outside my cell? Then who the hell are you and what are you doing in my head?”

Tony hears a deep, long-suffering sigh. _Projecting my image outside of your body is a mere waste of my already-limited time and magic, but I suppose it would make things a little more… convenient. I can spare it. As for your questions: some explanation would only benefit my plans, though I must be brief._

Tony clutches his stomach feeling instantly nauseous, his gut twisting in on itself, but the feeling disappears as soon as it begins and when he blinks, Loki’s standing in front of him.

And oh, what a sight he is.

The trickster is almost exactly like the one Tony last remembers: deep, sunken eyes, bloodied armour and a shadow hanging over it all, like a suffocating bath of tar. _This_ Loki has clearly lived through a lot more than the one currently gliding around in the halls of Odin upstairs. He stands like a guarded animal, his eyes very slightly wild but still brimming with intellect. Tony finds himself mesmerized by the figure.

_“As you were made aware by Thor, in the eyes of Asgard I was a fallen hero, redeemed by sacrifice in facing the Dark Elves. What he had not been aware of was that death is more often a temporary affair for me. I’d grown stronger and more resourceful with my magic. These things combined allowed me to surprise and overpower Odin, confusing his mind and sending him away while I took his place on the throne of Asgard.”_

The words echo inside Tony’s mind instead of coming from the direction of the projection and he grimaces, the dissonance only making his head hurt more.

“Wait so you’ve been ruling instead of Odin this whole time since the whole London incident? No wonder we hadn’t heard from you in a while. So what happened, did you get bored or something? You know when most people go to Barcelona, they visit the beaches and eat some of the spectacular seafood. Wreaking havoc and destruction is kind of missing the point of a holiday.”

“ _Your ability to speak and say absolutely nothing of consequence continues to astound me.”_ Loki sighs. “ _I… Thor once told me that a throne would suit me ill. I did not listen to him then, lost as I had been in my broken mind and the mental chains of the Other. Pity, for it had perhaps been the first glimpse of wisdom he had ever extracted from that thick skull of his.”_

The God chuckles darkly and Tony leans in. There is something raw about Loki’s words, something different to his tone. He suddenly gets the feeling that he is witness to a spectacle almost no one around the trickster ever witnessed: honesty.

“ _I never wanted a throne, never desired to rule. My attack on Midgard was an act of retribution against Thor and his obsession with the realm, but more than that it was not a completely voluntary act. My taking over Asgard and ousting of Odin was, again, something I did merely to prove that I_ could _. I had not considered that the ghosts of Odin’s halls would haunt me more than I had anticipated. I had not predicted the regret, nor the loneliness, once the last vestiges of madness left my mind.”_ Loki’s projection looks up and catches Tony’s gaze. “ _I had finally won and yet in the process I’d lost absolutely everything. Once the realisation formed, I could not stop thinking about it._ ”

“Right.” Tony says, because this is all a little too much to take in at once. His brain races through the revelations one at a time, struggling to compartmentalise the new picture that Loki is painting because _did he just say invading Earth wasn’t his own choice?_ “None of this explains why there’s currently two of you or why I’m the un-consenting guest of an Asgardian prison cell.”

“ _Why, Stark, I thought you’d have figured it out by now. I wanted to reclaim what I had lost and so I did the one thing I could: I hijacked some of the power of the time stone, graciously provided to me by the good doctor after I’d deliberately tripped his security wards—“_

“So _that’s_ why Strange went all the way to Spain. I’d heard he thinks he’s above all of the Avengers’ ground-level skirmishes.”

“ _—and I hurled you through time and space as close to the moment that needed changing as I could.”_

“You _what_?”

Tony suddenly feels rage and panic begin to bubble up inside his chest.

“Why the hell would you send _me_? Why not just travel back in time yourself? I’m sorry to hear that you’re all mopey about the shitty life you’d made for yourself _sitting on a fucking throne_ in a city made of gold after killing what is probably thousands of innocent people, but maybe I have other things to worry about like my own goddamn life in my own goddamn slot in the timeline!”

Loki, to his credit, stays quiet and listens to him intently, his blue-green eyes focused with pin-point precision on Tony’s face. He again notices how entirely different the God feels to just about every other encounter they’ve had before. It’s like someone turned the dial of ‘crazy demented psychotic killer’ down from ten to zero. Well, maybe two.

“ _Don’t make me laugh. You have nothing worth staying for in that godforsaken future either, if my knowledge is correct._ _I sent_ you _, Stark, because sending myself was too much of a risk and my magical reserves would have required syphoning off far more of the time stone’s power than I was able to in such a short time. I am Asgardian and a sorcerer to boot- a far more complicated thing to toss through the temporal dimensions than a mortal in a metal bucket. I did manage to attach enough of my essence to your person to instigate the correct turn of events remotely, including the consciousness that is currently talking to you, but this will not last forever. I am wasting the little magic I implanted by talking to you right now.”_

“Well boo-hoo, it’s not like I plan on actually helping you fix your life, Rock of Ages. I don’t owe you shit and I plan to find a way back to my own time as soon as I get out of this box.” Tony says defiantly because this is just _unfair_.

Loki's right about his life having been reduced to a series of unfortunate events. Between the panic attacks and the loss of Bruce and the break-up with Pepper… well, all Tony had left was his work and his whisky. It did not mean, however, that someone could just pluck him out of his shitty life and drop him into a different one.

“ _I’m afraid, Stark, that you will have very little choice in the matter as I’ve already begun taking steps to secure the changes I desire. I would also hazard a guess that the future you have come from is currently being overwritten as we speak and even if you were to find your way back to Midgard, find the time stone and a sorcerer crazy enough to tempt its chaotic powers, it would be infinitely more difficult to realign the timelines in order for you to end up in the one you left. It is a futile endeavour.”_

Loki steps forward and suddenly the apparition is inches away from Tony. He leans in, his nose almost touching Tony’s and smiles languidly while the mortal shivers. “ _Besides, it might be in your best interest to… how did you put it? Fix me? Because in this timeline there has not yet been any Chitauri invasion or Ultron. I suppose you could consider this chance a gift on my part, loathe as I am to imagine myself fighting alongside Thor again... On that note.”_

And then Loki just… disappears. Not with a pop or a whoosh or any discerning warning, it’s more like Tony blinks and there’s just wall where Loki used to stand. He bites down a curse. There had been so many other things he’d wanted to ask about.

“Loki!” he yells at the wall. “Loki you’d better damn well come back here and make it so I can punch your face, you owe me that much!”

“Strange, I would think that it is rather _you_ , who owes an explanation to _me_.”

Tony spins around so quickly he has to grab a hold of a table to steady himself.

“Oh God, another one.” Tony groans as younger-Loki’s expression flashes with confusion before moulding itself back to the inscrutable expression he wears as default. “Look, I’ve really had quite enough Gods of Mischief and their daddy issues for one day so could you please just leave me alone for a few hours while I deal with the fact that I’m potentially never going to get the chance to patch things up with my ex?”

“You knew.” Loki says instead, choosing to ignore most of Tony’s tirade. “You knew of my true parentage, of the fact that I am a monster. I need to know how and why. I need to know _who you are_.”

“Monster? Come on Lokes, don’t be so hard on yourself. I mean, sure the whole leather-reindeer combo is a little freakish, but I assume it’s what all the pretty boys in Asgard are into.”

“Do not play coy with me, you _knew_ that Thor was not my true brother. Your magic is drenched in Jotun ice and Asgardian fire. I know not where you come from but you have already done quite enough to show me that you are more than what you seem.” Loki grits out. “I could have Odin execute you at a moment’s notice. Worse: I could torture you myself until you slowly go insane before you tell me everything I need to know. It’s your choice.”

Tony’s silent for a moment. Loki’s eyes are wide and slightly crazed and Tony can see that they’re still glassy from tears that he’d obviously contained just moments before coming down to meet him. There is a silent desperation in his stance, like a man on the brink of a precipice and Tony swallows down the instinctive feeling telling him that he and Loki are perhaps more alike than he’d have wanted to admit to himself. That he too has stared down that precipice and not found anyone to grab him by the collar when he contemplated how exhilarating the fall might be.

“I’m a friend.” he says, finally. “A friend from the future.”

 _Perhaps it_ is _in my best interest to 'fix him'_ _._

 


	5. Dialoguing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm starting to like this story, would you believe it? So sorry for the plot being so slow, I'm getting impatient myself but there is little to be done. I promise it really starts rolling in the next two chapters!

Loki’s next words die in his throat.

_I am a friend._

_I am a **friend**._

The words are so unexpected that he barely manages to catch himself before he leaves his mouth hanging open like a fish pulled from water. The second part of the statement, surely the more bizarre, barely even makes it through to get registered.

_A friend from the future._

Then, before he can allow his fragile emotions to overrule his intellect, Loki stops. He reigns in the echoes of _monster_ and the visceral pain and longing that accompany the word _friend_ and his mind is steel. Loki will not allow his instability to get the better of him when he faces a mere mortal who is obviously lying.

“Friend.” He spits. “Not two hours ago you were cursing the very ground I stand upon. Do not insult me, Stark, I am not a fool. Even if I were to believe that you have somehow mastered the most sought-after ability in the nine realms and traversed the temporal aether- which I do not- there is no doubt in my mind that we are and always have been far from friends. _War criminal_ , you called me. Hostility is all you’ve shown me. Perhaps it gives you pleasure to torture me, first with the destruction of my personal world and then with the promise of something that I truly cannot have.”

The man before him stills for a moment, his eyes searching Loki’s with a new curiosity and something almost like… sympathy. Loki’s anger flares. Who is this creature, to pretend to hold any sympathies for _Loki_ , when his arrival has destroyed the very universe he had spent a millennium building.

“Alright, so maybe not exactly friend.” Stark finally says and something in Loki’s heart, some small shard of hope turns to venom. “But I _am_ from the future and believe it or not, Bambi, I’m here to help you.”

“You are here to bring _ruin_ to me.”

“Look, it’s not my fault that you’re adopted and that Odin’s not exactly winning Father of the Year any time soon.” Loki’s hands twitch and his eyes narrow at the word ‘adopted’ but Stark continues, unwavering. “I won’t go into the details but it’s kind of in my best interest to keep you happy and sane and stop you from committing a bunch of mistakes that will apparently make you want to change everything you do after this point in time.”

“Oh? And what are these catastrophic mistakes you speak of?” Loki mocks, although his eyes are glued to Stark’s with rapt attention.

“Can’t tell you, Frosty, spacetime travel rules and all that. But you know what? If you can get me out of here and find me some tools to get my armour back up and running again, I might begin to change my mind. What’ve you got to lose?”

Loki laughs, a cold, emotionless sound. “I think the question is what do I have to _gain_? I could just let you rot away in this dungeon forever or kill you where you stand.”

“Yeah but you’ve got to be at least a little bit curious, right?” Tony smirks very slightly, knowingly. “I’ll tell you one thing, Loki _Odinsson_ : we may not have been friends but I know you. You’re like me. I bet that right now, no matter how angry you are or how much you want to smite me, you’re still just _itching_ to believe that what I’m saying is true, to explore the possibilities. So I’m giving you a bargain: I’ll help you not fuck things up, tell you all about a future that could-be and you help me get out of jail. I’ll go insane if I’m stuck here without something to do for longer than a day or two and besides, it’s my first time on an alien planet, I’d do just about anything to have a look around.”

Loki grimaces. The man is good at this, _far_ too good at reading him. So few creatures have ever shown this depth of understanding of Loki and pretty much none in Asgard. The man has, infuriatingly, piqued his curiosity to a degree that Loki can no longer ignore.

“Fine.” He says, surprising both himself and Stark. “I shall speak with Odin. But I will require proof of your claims.”

“Oh I’ll come up with proof.” Stark replies boldly. “You’ll be drowning in proof. You’ll wish that proof w—“

“ _Is this satisfactory, Skywalker?”_

Loki steps back, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up as once again his own burning green eyes stare back, a sharp reflection. Stark has fallen silent, his mind shut away as the foreign presence projects using his voice, mutated to sound like Loki’s own. It smirks and disappears, but in its stead Loki feels the wash of magic, familiar and comforting. It’s like being dipped in a warm soothing bath and he closes his eyes, taking a deep breath and feeling his anxieties dim.

In his mind’s eye, a picture emerges and he recognises it immediately. A younger Loki, far younger, sits in his mother’s chambers and watches with delight as a small, blue flame dances around above his head, pride bursting through the seams of the child’s frame. It’s a memory he holds dear, locked away in the farthest recesses of his mind, protected from any form of mental attack: his first feat of magic.

This is his failsafe. This small glimpse into his private happiness that no one was ever privy to is impossible to access, not even through killing him. Loki has buried it in his mind as the ultimate verification of himself, of his own mind and his magic, should he ever fall and lose his faculties or be manipulated in some way. The fact that it has appeared now…  

When the image fades he is faced again with a disgruntled Tony Stark rubbing his temples and muttering curses under his breath and Loki lets out the breath he’d been holding.

“I assume you got your dose of proof just now, whatever it was.” Stark grumbles.

Loki stares at him momentarily still slightly dazed at the implications of what he had just witnessed. Who is this man, that holds a key the Trickster would swear to not give _anyone_? Perhaps… perhaps there is some truth to what Stark is saying. Loathe as he is to feel it, a strange form of hope begins to unfurl in Loki’s chest.

Trust, however, is a far more difficult thing to find.

And yet, here is a being that has traversed one of the most difficult paths to travel in order to meet _Loki_. The knowledge he could provide, regardless of his intent, is invaluable. Loki’s hunger to know more is almost uncontainable.

“You will have your freedom, Stark.” He mutters. “And I shall have your knowledge.”

The man looks up, surprised, but his expression quickly morphs into one of victory.

“Great, pleasure doing business with you. You won’t regret it.” He stops for a second. “Probably. _I_ might. But I already regret waking up this morning so I guess the only way is up.”

 “You admit we were not friends where you come from.” Loki says suddenly. “What _were_ we then?”

Stark is quiet for a moment.

“Look.” He begins carefully. “We didn’t really get off on the right foot for… reasons- some of which I think I’m here to fix. But I always wondered what you’d be like if we’d met differently. I know I’m sort of digging myself a deep hole here by telling you that we were on opposite sides of the battlefield but a lot of things have made me start to reconsider stuff and… things… er… Sorry, it’s been a long day.”

Loki doesn’t reply. He needs time: time to deal with the newfound possibilities of what Stark is saying, time to deal with his foolhardy brother’s coronation and the Jotuns, time to _think_. Time seems to be a key player in everything today.

“I shall speak with Odin.” He repeats instead and before Stark can add anything else, he teleports away.

\\\\\

Once Loki is gone, Tony slumps down on the bed, his tiredness already miles past every breaking point. His heart is beating like he’d just run a marathon and his shoulders are tense. The confrontation with Loki is almost too much to handle and Tony still hasn’t processed the fact that he’s nowhere near home and that he might never _be_ back.

He abhors the Trickster. The thought of having his entire life stolen from him in one fell swoop is maddening in both the anger and sanity aspects of the word.

And yet the man he just spoke to doesn’t make him angry at all. If nothing else, he finds himself beginning to grow a spot of sympathy for the young Loki as they butt heads. Tony’s not one to hold a grudge against someone that’s done nothing wrong (well, not to him or Earth, yet, anyway) and then there’s the awfully obvious parallel he finds himself drawing between himself and Loki. It doesn’t take a genius to notice it.

Yeah, so, this Loki’s a hot mess with a mountain of daddy issues and an ocean full of self-worth dilemmas. He’s obviously only just found out he’s adopted and that he’d been lied to his whole life and all of that, at least in his eyes, is on Tony and no one else. And yeah, Tony had a moment when he’d genuinely thought he could convince Loki that he was a friend because God knows he looks like he _needs_ one.

Tony decides to come clean about the future thing. There’s almost no point in making up an outlandish story when the truth is likely to help him get out of jail and accomplish the best outcome. Evil-Loki in his head seems to agree since he’s helpful in that awful take-over-Tony’s-mind-without-consent way. Tony’s honestly just winging it, but he can read the younger God like an open book and knowing what he knows from Thor, they could honestly probably get along. And then maybe Tony could be free to find the time stone and get back to Pepper and Rhodey and the team. It’s the best shot he’s got.

As he mulls over what he can remember from Thor’s stories of his and Loki’s childhood, a plate of food appears on the table in his cell and Tony suddenly realises he could probably eat an entire cow’s worth of burgers. It looks appetizing enough- meats and grains and vegetables- so he wastes no time in taking advantage of whatever hospitality angry daddy Odin can spare him and pretty much inhales the meal. They even give him a tankard of ale, bless them, and while it’s no single malt scotch Tony’s delighted to numb some of the anxiety down with alcohol regardless.

Once the meal is done his eyes can barely stay open anymore and he stumbles over to the cot before straight up passing out.

Tony dreams.

_It’s New York again and boy if Tony’s mind isn’t just the worst broken record to ever get played. He can feel the panic setting in, see the frozen, silent desolation of space, the alien army looming in the distance as beeps from his final unanswered call fizzle out and the familiar skyline drops away somewhere far below him._

_It’s funny how Tony knows he gets out of it alive but every time he’s in the dream it’s the same dread, the same absolute certainty that there is no way he’ll make it._ I’m gonna die here, in this wasteland, where my body will float forever as far from the people I care about as possible _. Nothing to find, nothing to bury, just silence and monsters in great big metal birds of prey._

_This time though, something is different. He looks up and instead of the Chitauri vessel he sees endless stars, a void, darkness. As he looks on the stars begin to speed up, rushing towards him at unimaginable speeds and Tony wants to scream as the vertigo becomes almost too much. He wants to close his eyes but just as he’s about to squeeze them shut, he notices something out of the corner of his eyes: a figure falling through the void along with him. Loki._

_And then he crashes- they both do- and he doesn’t feel the pain of impact and the crash itself feels muddled and time is all wonky but it’s all a dream and Tony doesn’t really question anything. He looks over to Loki who doesn’t even acknowledge him, choosing instead to speak to a dark figure on a giant throne and Tony can feel the sheer **terror** that this new creature instils in him. It’s visceral._

**_Thanos_**.

_And Tony knows it’s him, this awful conqueror of worlds, harbinger of death and pain. He sees Loki morph before him, broken, pained, slowly crumbling under the creature’s mental and physical torture, his eyes changing from angry and grieving to simply insane, his face gaunt and feral. He can’t quite make out Thanos’ shape but Loki’s white frame is almost ghostly in the darkness of their surroundings._

_Loki finally sees him and for a second the crazy in his eyes flickers._

_“Help me.” He says and Tony feels goosebumps._

_“Help me.”_

_Tony can’t move but Loki steps closer and yeah the crazy is back but it’s just sad, desperate. The Trickster grabs a hold of Tony’s arm and he can’t shake him off- can’t move at all- and he can feel the anxiety coming back and Loki’s hands are a death grip and Tony can’t_ breathe _—_

“Wake up, Iron Man, you have been asleep a long time.”

Tony jerks awake, reality rushing back to greet him with her trademark sucker punch in the gut. He sits up immediately and _Oh, yeah, prison. Asgard. Yeah. Great._

Loki is back outside his cell and boy does he look _haggard_. Nevertheless, he flashes Tony a tight-lipped smile and motions to a pair of guards behind him.

“You are in luck, Stark. My _father_ ,” he says the word with such distaste that Tony wouldn’t be surprised if Loki gagged at the mention of it, “was kind enough to be understanding of your predicament as an _unfortunate_ victim of a magical artefact which has transported you to our realm. He is saddened by your complete disorientation and loss of memory and is content to have you stay in Asgard under my supervision until such time as we figure out where to send you back.”

Loki nods at the guards and _oh, he’s **good**_. Tony’s got to hand it to the Trickster. No doubt Loki’s used the fact that Odin’s got a nice long backlog of lies and shitty parenting to guilt him into letting him deal with Tony however he sees fit. The cover story’s not bad either- they have a reason to keep him around instead of just sending him back to Earth immediately and no one will question Tony’s strange behaviour upon arrival.

“I’ll be sure to bake him some cookies next time.” Tony says and gets up, stretching his sore muscles. “Make sure I get my armour with me, I’m pretty attached to it.”

Loki nods, smirking. “You shall have all you may need, particularly to defend yourself against my dear raging brother. I may have failed to convince him entirely of leaving you be after you so graciously thwarted his coronation. You are lucky that the Jotuns make for a slightly more convincing scapegoat.”

“Oh, yeah.” Tony scratches his beard. “So what’s the plan?”

“First, I shall show you to your new rooms. And then you will tell me _everything_.”

 


	6. Therapy

“That man _cannot_ be trusted, brother, have you lost your mind?”

Thor is having an awful day.

Scratch that- it’s the _worst_ day of his life.

“He is merely confused, Thor. Surely this is not the first occasion that a wayward magical artefact has caused grief to creatures of the nine realms.” Loki replies with his infuriatingly calm temperament and Thor wonders whether it’s the whole world that’s gone insane or just him.

“Bilgesnipeshit. You heard him in the hall, Loki, he knows your name, as he does mine! He could be working with the Frost Giants to bring down Asgard from inside the palace!”

Thor looks imploringly at Odin’s impassive face but his father merely shakes his head.

“If Loki claims that he trusts this man’s story then I believe him. There is very little damage a mortal can do in the halls of Asgard.”

And oh, that’s _rich_ , trusting Loki over Thor.

The God of Thunder may yet love his younger sibling but today is not the day to test his patience nor his mercy. Not only is his coronation postponed indefinitely but the realm has just been attacked by _two_ separate incursions. And Thor is not lenient on the enemies of Asgard because he is to be king and that is not what a _king_ of Asgard would be.

Yet he watches despairingly as Loki defends the man who dared to destroy the ceiling of the throne room, interrupt Thor’s coronation and potentially lead a party of Frost Giants into Asgard undetected, and his own father sides with him. They may think he is stupid but while Thor cannot participate in their battle of wit and trickery, he is not blind to it either, not after growing up with Loki and Odin as family. He hears the hidden intent in Loki’s carefully selected words and tone and he sees Odin’s almost imperceptible concession of defeat.  

Loki has in some devious way convinced his father to forgive the Man of Iron. That does not mean that Thor will.

He has spent the last few hours fuming over the botched coronation and demanding that his father attack Jotunheim in retaliation because surely they cannot be allowed to simply _walk_ into his home and get away with it! Thor doesn’t understand how Odin can be so blind, so weak in the eyes of an enemy that has only ever wrought destruction and death unto every other creature in the nine realms. Surely a show of strength is the best way to deter further attempts?

If he were honest with himself, Thor would admit that the largest contribution to his anger is simply the fact that the most important day of his life just got blown to smithereens and there are tangible, physical, living things he can take his anger out on. And yet everything in the realm seems to be conspiring against his ability to lash out and deliver them their comeuppance.

When Loki finally leaves, triumphant, Thor begs his father to allow him to visit the strange man in the dungeons. Odin merely sighs.

“You must learn to temper your anger, my son. A good king does not seek out war nor dole out undeserved punishment. I will allow you to meet the prisoner once your anger has subsided and not before.”

So Thor leaves the room, still fuming, a thought- a _plan_ \- forming in his head. There is definitely something else going on with this Tony Stark and he will figure out what it is and deal with the Frost Giants himself- hopefully both in one fell swoop.

All he needs now is the help of the greatest warriors he knows.

\\\\\

Asgard is _ridiculous_.

Sure, Tony’s used to extravagance and luxury. Hell, he bought Pep a Scottish castle once because she mentioned that she liked Macbeth, deciding on the fly that he’d throw in some of the nearby lakes too. There are benefits to showing off your power and wealth- like having less people try to challenge it knowing they’d have no chance of winning.

 _This_ , though. This is a whole new level of swank. Daddy Odin sure knows how to put on a show.

Tony catches glimpses of the views through some of the high-arching windows and terraces of the palace as he’s escorted to the upper levels by two stone-faced Asgardian guards and a silent Loki that keeps shooting him covert glances filled with undisguised curiosity. What he sees is awe-inspiring: golden gleaming spires, multi-storey stone buildings with extravagant designs and a sprawling network of bridges and roads connecting different levels like an insanely complex spiderweb.

But the thing that _really_ gets his attention is a distant ribbon of light leading away from the city, rippling slightly with colour and light almost as though it were alive. Tony remembers interrogating Thor about it for hours: the Rainbow Bridge, an Einstein-Rosen wormhole generating device right before his very eyes.

Also his main method of getting back home.

He’s so busy trying to take in everything he sees that he barely notices the guards and Loki stop, stumbling for a second as one of the soldiers grabs his shoulder with what is most definitely way too much force. Tony yelps. Loki furrows his brow and motions for the guard to let go.

“I’ll take it from here.” He says and the men nod, though their expressions remain lightly hostile as they turn away from Tony and make their way back down the staircase. Loki turns to face him and grins, a full-toothed smile that sends goosebumps down Tony’s neck.

“Follow me.”

He pushes open a dark wooden door and Tony’s surprised to see a modest if tastefully decorated room. There’s a bed, a wardrobe and a wide desk as well as a large window with a pretty good view of the sprawling city, though not the bridge. He looks to Loki with a question in his eyes.

“Is it to your liking?” the Trickster asks with a slight mocking tone. “I am sure you are used to more luxury back in your mansions on Earth.”

Tony does a double take. _Mansions? How the hell does he know about the—_

“After I secured your freedom I took the liberty to verify your claims by making a short trip to Midgard while you slept. I’ll admit I had not expected it to be quite so easy to find your alternate self, _Merchant of Death_.”

Loki’s face is the picture of mischievous delight as his eyes devour Tony’s.

“I had assumed that if your claims were true, then surely there would be a version of the Iron Man in the timeline that you chose to invade, too, unless you had been thrown so far as to not have been born yet. You can imagine my delight at discovering that not only is there a Iron Man, but that he is by far one of the most interesting specimens of a realm I had believed to be devoid of anything worth my time.”

Tony can’t respond because he’s still too busy choking on air at the news that there are now _two_ of him in the universe _. Alright McFly, what’ve you gotten yourself into now?_

“And _you_ ,” Loki continues as though he can’t see that Tony’s having an existential crisis. “Either you are very good at setting up the stage for your ploy or what you’ve told me is true, which means that I am now privy to the most valuable information in the nine realms.”

Loki looks like he’s positively buzzing with some inner energy and Tony’s instantly reminded of himself when he’s in the middle of a project and something just _clicks_ , opening up a whole new realm of possibilities. Like the reactor core or the first time he’d made up his mind about building the Iron Man suit. Like he’s seeing into a whole different dimension that he couldn’t before.

It’s kind of hot, too.

_Whoa, bad Tony, **not** the time. What the fuck brain._

But then Loki’s gaze shifts and his smile is tinged with that slight malice that Tony remembers from the New York incident. He takes a step back just as Loki steps forward and he’s not quite quick enough before the demigod’s hand flies out and slams into his forehead and—

_The wormhole is behind him again, the Chitauri warship ahead. Tony’s heart is beating fast and he’s barely hanging onto consciousness as the terror of what he’s seeing finally catches up with him._

_Who would do something like this? Who could control the darkness of eternity, stand above death, above everything Tony knows in such an unstoppable, horrifying way? It’s like space itself is suddenly an entity and it’s threatening to swallow him whole, swallow Earth and the Avengers and Pepper and Jarvis and everything he ever managed to care for and call his own._

**_Thanos_ ** _._

_It’s not Tony’s mind that says it but it’s there regardless and he sees a dark, massive figure on a throne, clenching its fist which is covered with a metal gauntlet like some medieval space soldier. The creature smiles- he can’t see it but he knows it- and suddenly Tony’s screaming, mind-numbing pain jolting through his veins like his entire nervous system is on fire-_

_\- and this is not something Tony remembers, it must be someone else’s pain and-_

_-he **can’t** take it anymore._

The thought jolts him out of the vision for just a moment and Tony catches the reins thinking ‘ _Anything, anything but this!_ ’

And then he is _Loki, staring in the mirror in a room very much like the one they were in a second ago, his face pallid, bags under his eyes like he hasn’t slept in months. The face in the mirror shifts, blue tint diffusing through the white like a cloud of ink in water and as he watches, his eyes bleed red, unrecognisable,_ monstrous _._

_Mother is gone, father will never forgive him and Thor… Thor will be dead soon enough by the hands of Thanos after he’s done gallivanting with his Avenger friends. His brother has stopped truly caring, this he knows. Loki’s failed in every respect, lost anyone that might have ever loved him and while he doesn’t admit it to anyone, love is **all** he’s ever craved._

_He cannot continue like this. The face of Odin is all that gains him the respect and admiration that he desires and it’s corroding him from the very core with each passing hour. Loki has worn a face other than his own every day of his life as far as he can remember. If anyone were to see him for what he is, they would brand him as what he is: the demon that comes to terrorize children in the night. A brute. An ogre of ice and snow._

_Thanos is coming. Thor will die. The Avengers will die. Odin is fading. Loki…_

_Loki has nothing. Loki deserves nothing._

_‘If it’s all the same to you, I’ll have that drink now.’ He mutters to himself and smiles, self-loathing tainting every corner of his mind._

_In the mirror stands Odin._

Tony gasps, his mind crashing back to reality like a tsunami. For a few seconds he can’t quite distinguish his own thoughts and feelings from Loki’s. It’s like he’d drowned in it and can’t quite expel the last of the emotions from his lungs.

When he can finally make sense of his surroundings again, he finds that he’s sitting on the floor, sweat pouring down his back, his breathing ragged like he’d just woken up from one of the _really_ bad nightmares, the ones that have him blasting holes in the ceiling and send Pepper running to the other side of the mansion.

Loki’s on the ground opposite him, pale as a sheet, sprawled on the ground in a similar half-lying-half-sitting position, his knuckles so white that they may as well just be bone.

“What are you?” he whispers and Tony finally notices the tear marks streaking down the demigod’s face.

He lifts his hand to touch his own cheek and yeah, there it is. It’s been a while since the last time Tony ever let himself cry, because ‘Stark men are made of iron.’ Well fuck you too, Howard.

“This is not what I wanted.” Loki adds quietly. “This is not how it was supposed to go.”

And Tony, because he’s still emotional as fuck and has no idea how to deal with it or why it happened in the first place, says:

“Look I’ll be honest here: if I were your therapist, I’d have a job for the rest of my life. But if I could have a world where you’re still this mad, fierce genius who can do magic without the ridiculous fascistic autocratic tendencies, I think I might just give it a go.”

Then after a moment’s thought he adds:

“Though if we’re gonna start dealing with it, I’m really hoping you’ve got some alcohol hidden somewhere in this room.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Loki facepalm or rather, palm-to-face technique is taken directly from the Ragnarok scene with Valkyrie because it's an awesome tool in the magician's arsenal and I can imagine Loki abusing it often.
> 
> I'll be honest it's the next chapter that I'm personally excited about though. Plot gets rolling a little. Rolling on the river. (Ha okay maybe finishing this off with a glass of wine was not a grea idea. Or maybe it was the best.)


	7. Monsters and Merchants

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was hell to squeeze out. I'm not sure I'm too happy with it. All the emotions, man, they're tough to deal with.
> 
> Thank you for all the kudos <3 I swear the quality of the story will improve someday because I'll do it for you.

Tony can’t fix people.

It’s not just that his face belongs on the cover of ‘Damaged Goods Weekly’ or that he deals with his trauma and guilt by foregoing sleep, food and any form of non-liquid sustenance for days on end. If he were a better man he’d pull through for those around him despite his own mess. But Tony doesn’t fix people, he fixes machines. When it comes to people, Tony’s much better at breaking them. Pepper’s just the latest in a trail of destruction that Iron Man leaves in his wake.

No, Tony doesn’t fix people. But he hopes that he won’t manage to break a God.

“He’s sort of in there, somewhere.” He says by way of explanation at Loki’s astonished expression, pointing to his head. “So really, you’ve just got yourself to blame for the mess we’re in right now.”

“Hm... To think that I would go so far as to give away a part of my soul to someone else...”

Tony almost spits out his drink.

“Whoa there, you mean it’s a part of your _soul_ that’s renting out office space in my brain? How does that even work? I mean, I don’t think anyone even understands what a soul _is_ , let alone how to split it up and implant it somewhere. Wait, are you actually Voldemort in disguise? Am I a freaking _horcrux_?”

They’re on their first glass of mead and Tony’s never tasted anything this strong in his life. All it does is make him even more determined to outdrink Loki.

“Of course I know what a soul is.” The demigod says and for a moment the shadow over his eyes lifts. Tony immediately recognises the healing powers of intellectual masturbation. “Why would anyone be ignorant of something that is the essence of life, of oneself? The soul is what channels my magic, my memories, my very mind. It may require a vessel to sustain its form for a longer time, but it is free to flit between bodies if there are no defences to stop it.”

Tony thinks of the burning green eyes of the man in his mind and shudders.

“Is he listening?”

“I suspect my future self will not waste resources on conscious surveillance unless it is necessary. Although who can tell?”

Loki’s lips are a straight, pinched line as he considers the mortal before him.

“I would rather know why he chose _you_ to deliver this message as well as its true contents. Your mind is too fractured for me to extract useful information.”

“Hey you’re the one that slapped me and then fell over.” Tony grumbles, deciding not to bring up the obvious fact that those very fractured memories were likely Loki’s own, not his.

The Trickster God had warily explained his attempt at extricating information about the future from Tony’s brain without his consent- which in his mind only made it right that the attempt failed miserably, gleaning nothing but disjointed, dark emotions and sheer overpowering terror of a blurry threat. It could only be to the engineer’s benefit anyway, since Loki would have to rely on him and the ghost in his shell to get any real useful intel.

“Regardless, I wish to know more.” Loki takes a long sip of his own drink and deposits the empty cup on the table between them. He then languidly trails a finger up along its contour and to Tony’s amazement, the thing fills back up to the brim as though there were a hidden tube connected to the bottom. Fucking magic.

“You intrigue me.” He continues, as though he hadn’t just defied every law of nature Tony had ever known. “The Merchant of Death of Midgard with his flying, fire-wielding armour, a man misplaced in time and space. A man that I would trust with a piece of my soul.”

“Nah, I’m pretty sure there was zero trust involved. I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Loki gives him a level look. “You underestimate me, Stark. I am sure that no matter how dire the situation, I would never rely on any other living, breathing, dumb creature to fix it. So tell me: what are _you_ , that you should inspire the faith of a Liesmith?”

And Tony’s stumped. He hadn’t considered that Loki had picked him out of a line-up of some kind. Surely he must have _someone_ he could have relied on, someone who wasn’t an enemy of all things.

Tony remembers the visceral self-loathing and the knife-twisting stab of loneliness from Loki’s memories and thinks: _Oh. He really doesn’t have anyone else._

“I build things.” He says suddenly. “I don’t know a thing about magic or Asgard or any other supernatural crap. My dad was an asshole though, so I can at least relate to that. He spent his whole life looking for a superhero popsicle and making sure I _knew_ I was never going to be good enough. Then he went off and died along with my mom, just to complete the fucked-up childhood bingo. Then a few years ago I realised that that the weapons my company was making, the weapons _I designed_ were killing thousands of innocent people around the world. So I stopped making them and built a suit instead. I built something that would save lives instead of ending them.”

Loki blinks, at least mildly surprised by the sudden honesty tumbling from his guest’s mouth. Tony’s pretty surprised too, come to think of it. That drink must be stronger than he thought.

“The armour…” Loki looks pensive and glances to the corner of the room, where Tony’s Iron Man suit pieces lie in a graceless pile. “I can sense powerful energy lying dormant in its chest piece. It’s technology far more advanced than I’d ever encountered on Midgard before.”

“Yeah well, that’s because it is. State of the art. If you let me fix it up I’ll show you exactly what a little Earthly ingenuity can cook up.” Tony can’t help the exponential inflation of his bubble of pride at Loki’s words. The God merely cocks his head, his eyes still fixed on the armour.

“How does it work?”

Tony opens his mouth and then stops. Technically, Loki’s only ever been the enemy. He has no guarantee that the Trickster won’t turn against him at a moment’s notice, especially with his fragile emotional state and, well, actual evidence of Loki going full-villain. He really shouldn’t start spilling the details of his suit’s designs, since Loki’s smart enough to find its weaknesses and workarounds should he need them.

And yet Loki just looks _curious_ , honestly invested in what Tony has to say. And the inventor doesn’t really get people to listen to him rant about the intricacies of his tech, bar Bruce who’s been AWOL for long enough that Tony’d begun losing hope of ever getting his science buddy back again. He makes up his mind in the blink of an eye.

“C’mere.” He beckons the demigod to join him as he makes his way over to the pile of red and gold. Loki’s so surprised for a moment that he actually lets it show on his face, his eyes widening quickly and then narrowing again, as though disbelieving of Tony’s offer. But then he schools his expression and obeys, gliding over to where Tony’s already crouching and rummaging through the metal.

They spend at least an hour dissecting the various aspects of Tony’s work. The flight stabilisers are a joy to explain, since Loki not only knows the basic physics behind them but hints that the inherent knowledge is important in magical flight too and Tony’s _hooked_. Apparently magic’s somehow inherently a mathematical construct, something that manipulates the physics of the environment without necessarily disobeying any natural laws which means he could adapt it, maybe even create magical shields for future projects.

They argue for ages about the repulsors and whether or not Loki’s magical fire would be able to block them. To be fair, Tony has absolutely no idea how the fire even works but he’s adamant that he’s managed to disarm Loki in the past so _there_.

At some point Tony realises that the dull throb of anxiety that’s accompanied him since his arrival at Asgard has completely vanished and that the darkness in Loki’s tired eyes has faded a little. They’re both so invested in their discussion that Tony barely notices the earth-shattering growl emitting from his stomach.

Loki stops mid-sentence (something about some elemental stone he’d once stolen in Svartalfheim (ha, Dark-Legolas-Land) and its resemblance to the arc reactor’s composition) and looks as though he’s only just become aware of his surroundings. He frowns.

“We must eat. I’ll send for the servants.”

And isn’t _this_ new: being fussed over by Loki Odinsson of all people. Tony’s mind takes a second to grapple with the thought while Loki performs some voodoo communication with the kitchen. It reminds him of the fact that the man before him is not the same one that had the crazed, glowing eyes at the top of Stark tower, deadly grip and defenestrating practices included. It’s a strange thought, but not an impossible one.

When Loki turns back to face him, he’s different again. The darkness in his irises is back and his entire body is taut like a stretched bowstring.

 _Well, so much for therapy_ , Tony thinks, though to be fair he hadn’t even realised how much their chat had helped Loki ‘s mood until it was back to its usual sour self-loathing.

They’re both silent for a moment before Tony clears his throat.

“Care to share what’s suddenly got your Godly panties in a twist?”

Loki’s eyes flash threateningly. “You would do well not to upset me mortal. Your suit is still broken and my magic is powerful as ever.”

“Whoa, Mr. Mischief, sir. I thought we were almost getting along there for a moment. What happened to turn your grapes sour?” _Mmmm, sour grapes. Wine._ Yeah Tony’s definitely hungry.

Loki merely turns away in the grandest display of a godly tantrum that the inventor’s ever seen. He can tell that something’s eating at the Trickster’s thoughts but he can’t quite understand what might have triggered the sudden change. He’s about to open his mouth again to ask him when Loki turns back around.

“You may not speak of it, but it lingers in my mind, Iron Man.” He says, almost in a whisper. “That you have come here to warn me of the beast hidden deep within my skin. We were enemies, you say? Then how can I trust you or anything you tell me? And perhaps you have good reason to lie, to pacify me. Knowing that I am a demon of ice, a brute beneath layers of Aesir vanity. I suppose it must be in my nature to maim and to destroy, to be alone and to regret all I am or have been.”

And suddenly Tony gets it.

“Oh no.” he says, feeling a strange sort of anger rise in the back of his mind. “I call bullshit, right here, right now, before we go any further. You may be messed up but it has nothing, _nothing_ to do with who your parents happened to be or what colour your skin is. Back where I come from we call that sort of thing racism and you’ve managed to internalize it a degree that’s just ridiculous.”

Loki’s face is pure shock and he opens his mouth to protest but Tony cuts him off.

“No, wait. Sure, I’m not exactly best buds with your future self. We’ll leave stories of holes in the sky and magical sticks of destiny for later, but the only problem I’ve ever had with you was your own choices and actions. No one is born a monster. No one is born evil. And _no one_ has to stay that way if they are. People change.”

“No they don’t.” the Trickster replies haughtily, although Tony can see cracks appearing in his conviction. “They mask who they are and hope no one notices.”

Tony laughs, but there’s no humour in it. Somehow this whole thing has turned into a therapy session for _both_ of them.

“He says to the man they used to call ‘Merchant of Death’. If I didn’t believe people could change then I’d have given up ages ago. Stop whining oh Master of Mischief and appreciate the fact that you’re getting a second chance _before_ you mess things up.”

And Loki just crumbles.

“You have missed your mark, Tony Stark.” He says, barely a whisper. “If you had truly wanted to find me before it all went wrong, you’d have picked up the runt that Laufey left to die in the wastelands of Jotunheim and tossed it from a cliff before Odin could lay his hands on it.”

 _Ah, here it is,_ Tony thinks. This is the man who would let go, would throw himself into the abyss created by the destruction of the Bifrost. This is the man who is so consumed by the hatred of what he symbolises that he’d rather face an uncertain, infinite darkness than to make amends and learn to live with his mistakes.

This is Tony, in a cave in Afghanistan. This is the darkness that closes in when he realises what his life has amounted to. But Tony learned from his mistakes. He left it behind, became Iron Man and made a new purpose for himself.

“I won’t pity you.” he says simply. “I respect your intelligence too much to do that. But I think I’m starting to understand why I was the one sent back to help.”

Tony had Yinsen. Loki has no one. Thor may have loved his brother but he’d never _understood_ him. All Odin had done was manipulate him. And despite what happened between them in some potential future, this is not something the Trickster deserves, in any universe. So Tony takes a step forward and puts his arms around the taller man’s shoulders.

He feels Loki stiffen, instantly, before relaxing into the touch. Tony can tell how hard the demigod fights to hide his shock at the contact. He can’t quite hide the slight shake of his entire body though.

Tony could say a million comforting things just then, but nothing seems very appropriate. And despite the sudden empathy he feels, he’s still crap at people, mortal or immortal. So he stays quiet, somehow knowing that all Loki needs at that point is to not feel alone.

When the knock on the door finally sounds announcing the arrival of dinner, Loki steps away from the inventor with an air of indifference, but Tony knows something has changed. And perhaps not just for the God of Mischief.

Hey if he was going to be alone in a brave new world, they might as well be lonely together.


	8. Shieldbrothers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologise for the lack of answers to your comments I will endeavour to do all of them this time. I was busy travelling halfway across the world this last week, hence the lack of engagement. This also accounts for the lateness of this chapter (though it was also a bitch to write, I hope that doesn't come across too much).
> 
> Regardless I love your comments, there's nothing quite like hearing what moved you or engaging in some fun emotional dissection of two snarky emotionally-constipated antiheroes.

After a servant lays out their dinner the tension in the room deflates a little. Stark makes appreciative noises at the sight of the assortment of meat and fish, immediately heading for the golden decanter of wine and pouring both of them a generous offering of the drink, which Loki is grateful for. He is not overly fond of the effects of alcohol but on a night like this, there’s nothing he’d like more than to dull his senses and forget everything that transpired.

Well, almost everything.

His feelings are chaos, teetering constantly between blazing rage at Odin and suffocating self-hatred. One moment Loki feels like he deserves the sight of the Allfather knelt before him, begging forgiveness and offering him the throne. The next his skin itches with the need to claw it off and destroy the curse that he represents. It is difficult to reconcile the notion of superiority he’d always held over Thor and many of the creatures in the realm and simultaneously deal with the realisation that perhaps they had been _right_ , that he is nothing more than a nightmare, the snake that they had all long held him to be.

And yet, Tony Stark does not think so.

In fact, his time travelling guest treats him with something approaching _respect_ , a thing that no one around him has ever done (and this from an enemy, even if it’s only some version of one). His wit and intelligence had always made Loki an outcast amongst the Asgardians. He did not have an assortment of friends like Thor, nor did he have anyone to discuss his countless ideas and musings with. Odin and Frigga were all he ever had to match him in pure ingenuity and they were his… well he’d thought them to be his parents. They were not the likeminded companion to cause mischief with he’d always dreamed to have.

The man seated before him is… he’s different.

Anthony Stark of Midgard intrigues him, both as the being intentionally misplaced in time by some version of Loki and as the veritable riddle that his persona on Midgard presents him with.

(The God of Mischief and the Merchant of Death; what a pair they are to share a meal in the halls of Asgard.)

Their conversation about the Iron Man armour is like a breath of fresh air. Loki had never mastered the physical sciences as much as he’d been enticed by the magic arts, but he is no novice. Every question he throws at Stark is met with enthusiasm and ingenuity. The man is quick to grasp the basics of the _seidr_ too, immediately constructing an impressive blueprint for a physical shield to impede magical energies. So impressive, in fact, that Loki cannot immediately see any flaws in the idea and wonders how he himself had never considered such a combination.

(Somewhere in the back of his mind, he wonders if his future self had seen it too, had sent him someone he could finally talk to. It would be fitting for Loki to be the God to answer his own prayers.)

It is not the wit or the intelligence, however, that finally changes everything and makes Stark the first creature to truly fascinate him. It is the fact that he _accepts_ Loki.

Not only that; Stark accepts him even now that his true, grotesque nature is revealed. It has been centuries of nothing but suspicion and derision from all in Asgard but his closest family, all because Loki had always been the one who knew things, who practiced magic and stuck to the shadows where his brother shone with golden light and thwarted enemies with his hammer. Loki does not dare to imagine what the people of the realm would say or do if they were to find him to truly be a monster. Perhaps they would tut tut and shake their heads and whisper about how they had always known he was nothing but trouble. Perhaps they would be relieved that their inexplicable hatred of him would suddenly be validated.

Yet Anthony Stark’s actions and words reveal nothing but honesty in their conversation. Even as he reminds the Trickster that they were enemies in some distant reality, he does not sneer or insult him when they talk. The Iron Man has a brusque style of speech, sure, but his words are always honest, his truths sharp as his tongue.

Loki had forgotten what it feels like to speak to someone that does not act like they expect him to suddenly turn into a snake and sink his teeth into their leg. (Though to be honest he’d done that to Thor in the past. It had been a pretty hilarious prank, mind, young and stupid as he’d been; he’d probably not take it back even now.)

“So what next?” Stark’s voice wakes him from his musings and Loki turns to meet his gaze, his lips twitching slightly.

“Surely of all the creatures in this realm, _you_ would know what’s next better than anyone.”

Stark snorts.

“Hey don’t get smart with me, I’ve got an entire boyband of A.I.s to do that already. Or, well, I suppose I did.” He sighs. “I need to fix the suit. Unfortunately, despite what your cheerily evil future self planned for us, I’m not exactly the expert on the goings-on of Asgard. So unless he makes his snarky holographic return anytime soon, all I’ve got to go on are the files I’ve read on yourself and your brother as well as the stories he’s told me. And most of those involved a lot of drinking and monster-hunting with his friends. Thor would get kind of quiet when it came to talking about how you… went darkside.”

Loki freezes. He’d almost forgotten the other players in this convoluted story.

“You know Thor.”

“Oh yeah. Big damn hero, hell of a baritone- maybe a bit too fond of this giant hammer he carries around. Nice guy though, I like him despite the fact that every time he comes to visit we have to stockpile a bunker’s worth of poptarts.”

Loki frowns. “Thor has never visited Midgard to my knowledge. Once, perhaps, to slay some giant ocean beast or other and bring its head back in order to woo a maiden he’d met in a brothel.”

“Ah, well, see, this is where I might actually know something, though I’m not sure how it’ll play out now that I’m here. So you know how there’s these giant ice things in that Yo-tuna-something place?”

“Jotunheim.” Loki spits through gritted teeth. “I’m aware of them.”

Stark winces. “Yeah, sorry, touchy subject, I know. Anyway, turns out Thor got pretty angry about the whole coronation thing and—“

Before the mortal can finish, the doors burst open with a sound like thunder and Loki immediately stands up, more than aware of what’s coming. _Why does he always barge into my affairs like a lumbering buffoon?_

“Man of Iron!” Thor bellows as he strides into the room. “I have come to claim justice for Asgard!”

“That’s nice.” Stark replies and stands up too, meeting the prince’s gaze with a steely, unyielding one of his own.

Thor is visibly angry and there is a stubbornness in his eyes that Loki is more than familiar with. There is a reason that he is known as the fiercest warrior of Asgard and not all of it is down to brute strength; Thor’s resolve can be the greatest weapon of all, if only he’d ever combine it with the use of his brain.

“You have brought the enemies of Asgard to its very heart.” He growls. “You have aided the Jotuns in their quest to steal the Casket of Ancient Winters. For that, you shall answer accordingly with the greatest punishment we can deliver.”

“Hey cool it, Point Break, I didn’t help anyone with any seasonal caskets. I just happened to pick a bad time to crash-land, which wasn’t exactly the most pleasant experience for me either, let me tell you that much.”

Thor takes a threatening step forward.

“Never has anything escaped Heimdall’s all-seeing eyes before and yet both you and the Frost Giants arrive cloaked in shadow not minutes apart. I may not be wise as my father but even I can see that the coincidence is not to be ignored. I will not trust you.”

“Alright, I’ll give you that it seems pretty suspicious. Why the hell would I make a scene upstairs though, if we were trying to be discrete?”

“To cause distraction, to stop us from discovering the thieves!”

“Oh yeah, and get myself caught in the process. Real smart. Come off it Thor, since when do mortals like me deal with Ice Giants anyway? What do I have to gain from it?”

Thor pauses and Loki thinks it may be the fact that he honestly doesn’t know a thing about Midgard or what they might stand to gain in dealing with the Jotuns. Thor had never been one to explore other realms or take much interest in affairs other than his own achievements or his immediate circle of friends- not since they had been children at least.

“Prove it then.” He says finally and the look on his face tells Loki that he had been leading up to this moment the entire time, so obviously proud of his own mental gymnastics. “Prove that you are not allied with the Frost Giants.”

“Alright.” Stark says, and then a moment later adds: “Er, how do you suggest I do that?”

“You will travel to Jotunheim with myself and the Warriors Three, where we shall exact punishment upon Laufey for the intrusion so that they would know never to cross Asgard again. If they recognise you or you attempt to aid them in any way, then we will know where your loyalties lie.”

“Don’t be an idiot, Thor.” Loki scoffs. “He’s mortal, his bones may as well be made of sticks. If he goes to Jotunheim he will be dead before Laufey even glares in his direction.”

But Stark holds up his hand and chuckles. “Nah, I’ll take that deal. Might as well extend this inter-realm trip to more than just the one. But I have a proviso: you need to give me time to fix my armour. That way I won’t end up a puddle of mush on the floor when you guys inevitably smash the living hell out of each other.”

Loki wants to protest but the look in Stark’s eyes is pure steel: he knows immediately that trying to change his mind is an almost futile endeavour.

“Do you have a death wish?” he hisses.

“No. I promised someone once that I wouldn’t waste my life and I don’t plan to. But this is important. Don’t worry Bambi, I can take care of myself in a snowball fight.”

The last part is said with a small grin but the distant, jet-black look of Stark’s eyes does not lighten in the least. Not for the first time, Loki feels like he’s managed to peel away only the surface layers of the other man’s mind.

Meanwhile, Thor is unnaturally quiet and Loki realises that he is thinking. _Well, at least Stark has already managed to change one thing in Asgard for the better._ His bro— _Thor_ finally looks at their mortal guest and nods.

“I accept, Man of Iron. You may have one week to repair your armour before we venture on our quest, but no more than that. On that day I shall come to collect you and we will teach Laufey a lesson he will not soon forget.”

The Thunder God steps forward and holds out his hand, with Stark grasping it immediately with a grin. Loki feels a green vein of jealousy run through his heart. There is a clear camaraderie between the two men despite Thor’s suspicions, as though they are already acquainted with each other, as though they’re _shieldbrothers_. Perhaps that is why Thor is suddenly lenient enough to give Stark time in repairing his armour. After all, Stark is a part of both their fates and Thor has at least some inherent affinity for magic. He must sense something too.

Once the Thunderer is gone, probably to gloat to his friends or at his own reflection in the mirror, Loki sits down again, avoiding Stark’s eyes.

“Why would you agree to that?” he asks, feeling unusually petty. Stark sighs.

“In my timeline, Thor and I fight on the same side. I told you: I kind of like the guy when he’s not a self-obsessed prick of a prince. So having him this pissed at me for something I didn’t do feels kind of shit. I’d like to change that.”

“I see.”

That’s right. Loki is the enemy. Thor is the hero. It will always be this way, as it always has been and Stark is a fool to think that his arrival will change anything. At least now Thor plans to do exactly what Loki had intended him to. He will make a fool of himself in Jotunheim and Odin will have to reconsider passing on his kingship. Things could not have panned out better.

So why is Loki so angry?

He catches the mortal’s concerned gaze studying his face, which probably looks about as sour as a fresh lingonberry. Loki doesn’t bother to mask it as he usually would. Stark looks like he’s about to say something but then he catches himself and shakes his head.

“… Should probably just call Jane Foster.” He mutters to himself although Loki hears it perfectly. Then, in a louder voice: “Hey Frosty, for what it’s worth, Thor can be great for a drinking game, but you’re the one that’ll help me build magic upgrades into my armour this week which makes you infinitely more interesting and better company.”

“Your pathetic attempts at placating me are noted, Stark, but I’m not blind to ulterior motives.” He says coolly, although his inner self preens under the compliments. “Nevertheless I shall see what we can incorporate into that pile of metal. You are of no use to me as a frozen toothpick for a Frost Giant. Besides, I have yet to hear any useful information from your supposed alternate future.”

“You need to stick around for that.” He winks. “Looks like it’ll be a hell of a week.”

“Indeed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THE NEXT CHAPTER WILL HAVE ACTUAL PASSAGE OF TIME. I've been waiting for this. Don't get me wrong the reason the last 8 chapters dealt with a short timespan was because I loved writing it but now I can have some time for my babies to grow and develop. Exciting times. <3
> 
> Thank you again for the kudos and the comments and the subs. You all make it worth posting these things.


	9. Forging a Friendship

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The responses to this have been unimaginable. I'll keep thanking you all every time because it's still awesome and I still can't quite believe it.
> 
> I'm on my third timezone in a month and it's way too late and I have to deal with quantum algorithms in the morning so I think I might just dump this one here without too much preamble. Enjoy!

Seven days. Tony has seven days to get ready to face a brand new planet with giant, ice-power-wielding aliens whose one claim to fame as far as he’s aware is the attempt to conquer Earth and all its creatures sometime over a thousand years ago.

 _Seven days_.

So he does what he does best: work. It’s Afghanistan and Palladium-poisoning and Pep’s anger and his never-ending guilt: Tony always deals with his problems the same way. The only difference is that now he’s in a makeshift forge rather than his own workroom back on Earth.

They set up everything he needs anyway. While he doesn’t have his holographic tech or any of his annoying (trusted, _friends_ ) bots to help him out, the furnace and the tools that are brought to his room should be enough for the repairs he needs, as well as the ores and electronics obviously salvaged from old spaceships or other extra-terrestrial machinery. Tony itches to dissect alien tech but settles for fixing the suit first, learning all he can about it while he works.

He doesn’t ask who made sure he’d have all he needs to do the repairs.

\\\\\

It’s strange in the beginning, having Loki by his side. The Trickster insists that he has more than enough free time to accompany Tony in his quest to avoid getting smushed by Frost Giants and Tony’s half-delighted and half-terrified. On the one hand, having magic-proof armour is _awesome_ (and understanding magic doubly-so, especially when it’s taught by such an engaging teacher) but on the other, Loki’s still halfway unstable and the last thing he wants to do is to set off the chain of events that will lead to the Rainbow-bridge tumble and whatever came after it.

Knowing what will happen is one thing. Changing it is another.

It’s surprises even him, then, that his mood at the end of their first day is possibly the best it’s been for _months_.

\\\\\

They work together, with Loki drawing up his own plans for runes and potential helpful spells he can weave into the metal as Tony shapes it and reconnects broken links. At one point, the God of Mischief disappears and returns a short while later with a fist-sized lump of metal that Tony can’t immediately recognise.

“This is _uru_.” Loki says and there is nothing but pure reverence in his tone. “It conducts magic better than any other material in the universe. Do not ask how, for even I have not understood its mechanism after centuries of study.”

Tony takes it and something tells him that what he’s received is more than just a helpful trinket. There is a strange weight behind Loki’s actions.

“Where did you get it?” he asks. Loki stays quiet.

It’s an odd metal. Tony can’t quite decide what to do with it. He doesn’t know its melting temperature or properties or anything, really. And yet he picks it up and feels pure _instinct_.

He plays around with it for a while and some of the properties start to make themselves known. It’s weird but it’s like the metal’s telling him what to do and it feels like a dream half the time, some sort of inner compulsion. Finally, after some prodding with different tools at different temperatures, he manages to melt it down and stretch it out. Once the metal is malleable he gilds the inside of his armour and then Loki is there, muttering incantations and carving runes. Tony doesn’t realise it at once, but the demigod looks shocked.

“You are full of surprises, Tony Stark.” He mutters. Then, louder: “This should protect you from just about any direct magical attack, though perhaps not magic that is without malice. There are always loopholes, no matter how much you may try to bend the _seidr_ to your will.”

Tony just nods, fascinated. He’s not quite sure when he’d become totally okay with a former enemy casting spells willy-nilly all over his armour, but somehow he just is.

\\\\\

The end of day one turns out to be morning of day two. Neither of them notices until the darkness outside Tony’s window starts to turn red and then orange and suddenly he’s blinking as the first spectacularly bright rays of sunlight enter his vision.

“We must sleep.” Loki says, stretching his legs from his perch on Tony’s bed. He abandons the ancient tome he was reading to walk over and inspect the engineer’s progress, his eyes careful not to betray a single stray thought or emotion.

“You are quick, Stark.” he says, running his fingers over the metal that would cover Tony’s calves. Said genius _playboy_ philanthropist suddenly can’t help but imagine those same slender fingers on his actual skin and swallows, hard. It’s been too long since Pepper and Loki’s too damn attractive for his own good- a real-life femme fatale in Tony’s convoluted life story.

“I feel fine, I’ll keep working. You go sleep.” He says even as he stifles a very persistent yawn. Damn the lack of coffee in this stupid realm.

Loki’s lips twitch. “Suit yourself. Although I will be back in the evening to continue with my spellwork and I do not much care for your state when I do. I will not hesitate to pour ice over your head to wake you if required.”

Tony opens his mouth, about to express indignation at the remark but then he stops because Loki is _smiling_.

The trickster isn’t even looking at him as he does it, either. He’s still stroking the uru-plated bits of armour that Tony’s carefully moulded back into shape and his eyes are something almost like… well the best word for it would be soft, but there’s a slight mirth, a hint of childish mischief in them that adds a touch of excitement to the whole expression. Tony stops because it’s not a look he’s ever seen or could have even imagined on an enemy’s face.

It adds a dimension to Loki that he hadn’t ever considered to be possible. It makes him look _human_.

Then Loki apparently catches himself and his face is blank as he turns to walk out of the room.

“You’ve made good progress, let yourself rest.” He says by way of goodbye and then shuts the door behind him.

\\\\\

Tony lasts about thirty minutes before straight up passing out. The lack of coffee and the stress of the last few days defeats even the worst of his usual work-fuelled insomnia.

Or maybe it’s that he’s strangely anxiety-free for the first time in a while. Being away from earth and its problems is actually weirdly liberating, even if he still kind of misses his friends and his home.

And anyway, chatting to Loki about his tech and the demigod’s magic takes his mind off the approaching confrontation with ice giants and his own worries about getting home. It’s been a while since he could have a decent, engaging conversation with someone that could keep up. He’s in a good mood.

Tony thinks:

 _It really sucks that Loki had to be the bad guy. We could have really gotten along if he’d just been Thor’s quirky mischievous brother_.

Then:

_Oh. I guess now he can be._

And with that thought, his consciousness finally gives up.

\\\\\

Loki lies awake for a while after he gets back to his room, trying to decipher his feelings.

He feels at peace, for one, which is not something he’s had the chance to experience for a while. Often he falls asleep angry or feeling wretched because of the derision he faces all day both from Thor’s friends and from the populace of Asgard.

The other invasive emotion he feels escapes him for a while. It’s a contentment of sorts, kind of like the joy he feels when he manages to irritate Sif with a well-executed prank or the thrill of a well-fought battle. It’s most similar to what he experiences in his journeys through the realms, when he chances upon a new form of magic to understand and deconstruct, or a creature or artefact that he can study.

And it’s obvious when it finally becomes clear to him: he’s _happy_.

It’s a _pure_ sort of happiness, untainted by the usual negative emotions that often accompany his contentment on other occasions.

Loki’s proud of the work he and Stark have accomplished. He’s impressed with the mortal’s work. He’s _fascinated_ by the fact that he managed to tame uru, a feat said to be near-impossible for a non-magical creature and wildly difficult otherwise. Only the dwarves are said to be able to truly work with it in any useful manner.

It has taken him centuries to procure as much of the metal as he gives away to Stark, but he does it immediately, instinctively. It’s like his magic pulls him to do so and he’s not as worried about as he perhaps should be.

What he does not do is interrogate his prisoner (guest?) about his knowledge of future events. He’s far too absorbed in the task at hand anyway. It’s been a while since Loki’s had the chance to really push his knowledge of object-seidr and runes this far. He’ll have plenty of time to deal with other matters later. After all, if Stark really is there to help Loki through the machinations of his own future self, then he will reveal something of importance is it comes up, surely.

It’s not prudent and it’s not something Loki would ever do, yet every instinct (or is it emotions that rule him now?) tells him it’s alright. After all, he’s _happy_. How bad could it be?

\\\\\

When Tony dreams, it’s not New York or aliens for once and he almost wants to pat his subconscious on the back.

Instead, he feels a presence encroaching on his space and when he tries to prod it, he gets a sharp shove and a frustrated response:

_‘I am thinking Stark, be quiet for a moment.’_

His irritation is instant.

_‘Hey, you’re the one that’s invaded my brain. Now shove off, find another soul to sulk in.’_

Loki doesn’t respond for a minute and Tony thinks he’s actually disappeared, panicking for a moment about being stuck in this weird dream-limbo, but then the voice returns:

_‘… There are a number of things I did not completely anticipate happening with your presence in the past. I must re-evaluate my plans.’_

Tony’s irritation begins to feel oddly like anger.

_‘You threw me into this universe, pal, and you’re the only one that knows exactly what you want to happen. I tried my best playing therapist and I just don’t—‘_

_‘It’s not just about my state of mind, you sentimental fool, there are greater things at play here.’_ Loki’s voice hisses and it’s strangely more adamant, more emotional than maybe is needed. _‘You like playing the hero, Stark, well trust me when I say you’ll get plenty of chances to do just that, regardless. I just did not… the distractions…’_

Loki peters off, almost as though he’s having trouble focussing on speech. He pauses and Tony strains his brain to sense him. His next sentence is clearer, more assured:

_‘I do not have enough of my seidr in this piece of soul to continue like this. Thanos must be stopped. I have a trick or two up my sleeve yet, but you must not, under any circumstances, allow my past self to fall. No matter what happens, Stark.’_

_‘Who the hell is Tha—‘_

///

“—nos?”

Tony blinks awake, remarkably more comfortable than he’d expected to be after his last few returns to consciousness. He realises he’s in his Asgardian bed, the covers draped over his body. He doesn’t remember getting there before passing out.

“Speaking in your sleep is the sign of an underdeveloped mind.” Loki says. He’s leaning over the workbench with one of the precision lasers and Tony cranes his head to get a better look at the new runes. “There are fresh clothes laid out for you on the chair and food on the table. If the clothes do not fit you, I can adjust them as necessary.”

The engineer decides that after everything he’s managed to accept about the situation, he’s not going to start having issues with food and clothing, even if tunics aren’t necessarily his thing. He’s got a lot on his mind anyway.

///

It turns out Tony only slept around four hours (meaning Loki likely slept even less). For most of the rest of the day, they continue to indulge in a companionable discussion as they work on the armour. There’s plenty of fixes to be done and Tony’s already sketching ways to improve his stabiliser efficiency in his head- ideas he’s more than happy to share with Loki who is a keen listener with some genuinely useful questions.

It’s nice, Tony thinks. This is nice.

At one point he looks up and he could swear he sees Odin standing in a corner of the room, his eyes fixed on the two men with a strange look in his eyes. In a blink though, the Allfather disappears.

“There are not many places Odin’s gaze does not find in the realm if he needs it to.” Loki says even though Tony doesn’t bring it up. “He will not bother us as long as he is not aware of Thor’s plans.”

That would be the end of the strangeness for the day except that as the sun finally dips below the horizon (and Tony really should ask Loki about how the star system works in Asgard because it’s definitely not a round ball of earth and metal spinning around a star, that’s for sure), the door is very nearly blasted off its hinges by a massive force.

Loki and Tony’s heads snap up. The former groans.

“The Lady Sif and the Warriors Three.” Says a woman at the front of what looks like a strangely puppy-like eager cluster of men. “We have come to check on your progress, Iron Man.”


	10. Good Company

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slightly longer chapter this time and I so do not have time for this but the story has a life of its own now, Oh Dear.
> 
> Also I cannot bear to disappoint those of you who are reading this. You are a lovely bunch. So yeah, this one's for you. <3

Sif and her three companions take a step into the room and then stop as they notice that the off-worlder is not alone.

“Loki.” Sif says through gritted teeth. “Thor did mention that you’d thrown your lot in with the intruder. Is this one of your spiteful plans to push Asgard into chaos?”

“No, this is the innocent man you would feed to the Frost Giants to appease your thirst for battle.” The Trickster replies, straightening up and placing the tools he’d been working with back on the bench. Hogun takes a step forward.

“How are you so sure of his innocence?”

“I am not. I am merely not so sure of his guilt.” Loki smirks at Tony as he says this. “I have my methods to glean information, you are aware. Why, I remember that one time in Nornheim—“

Fandral blushes and coughs loudly, interrupting the Trickster’s words and his now fully-developed leer.

“Never mind.” Sif sighs. “Regardless we’re here to inspect the mortal man’s work and to make sure that he is not attempting to fool us or run away. I see now that he is indeed under supervision, if not a particularly trustworthy one.”

Loki scowls.

“You continue to be wary of me despite our countless shared battles and my sacrifices during them. You may not trust magic Sif, stupid as that may be, but you can surely trust a Prince of Asgard.”

Tony, who’s brimming with silent curiosity throughout the exchange notices Loki’s fist tighten by his side. _Come on Frosty, don’t give them the satisfaction._

“Don’t make me laugh Loki. The only reason you ever helped anyone was to help yourself. In this, too, I would only trust your involvement as far as it benefits your own plans.”

Right, Tony’s done listening. He steps forward, placing himself deliberately at Loki’s side and feels everyone’s eyes zero in on him.

“If I may.” he says, feeling more than a little irritated. “You’re all standing here accusing Loki of being self-serving and traitorous while you’re planning to directly disobey the king himself behind his back. Kind of a double-standard, don’t you think?”

Hogun casts his eyes down in shame, while Fandral and Volstagg look like they had been punched in the face. Sif merely scowls. Loki, meanwhile, has his eyes glued to Tony like he’d just grown a second head.

“If you are indeed innocent, mortal man, then you would do well not to associate yourself with snakes.” Sif says. “Loki will lie and betray you as he has always done. He does not fight with honour, he prefers magic and shadows and trickery.”

Tony watches as Loki visibly recedes into himself, his anger and resentment etched into the stiff set of his shoulders. His eyes are no longer trained on the mortal, wandering around the room instead like a caged beast.

“Well I think magic’s awesome.” Tony replies. “And Loki’s not the one that met me with swords and arrows the moment I landed. I might not know any of you all that well but at least _he_ never made the impression of being an utter asshole.”

God he hates the woman already. The other three are at least decent enough to look ashamed and not ramble about their superiority. If this is what Loki had to put up with for centuries, no wonder he turned out the way he did. He watches with satisfaction as Sif’s face morphs from annoyed to utterly enraged.

“I see.” She spits. “It appears as though you’ve finally found your equal, Loki Liesmith. I only hope the Norns will protect us from the destruction that you are sure to bring about together.”

“Sure beats hanging out with you.” Tony shoots back.

Sif doesn’t even pause before spinning on her heel and storming out of the room. The Warriors Three look to each other in a moment of quiet confusion before Hogun finally nods his head in Tony’s direction.

“You must forgive the Lady Sif, she has a temper **.** Thor told us that he sensed honesty in you and I will trust him as long as you do not give me reason to do otherwise.” He pauses, casting his gaze on the God of Mischief. “She is right, however, in her advice to not associate too much with Loki if you wish to retain trust in this realm.”

Tony watches Loki’s entire body deflate even as his eyes spit lightning. It’s clear that this sort of treatment isn’t new to him and that he hasn’t succumbed and accepted it yet but it does affect him.

There’s a part of Tony telling him that their suspicions are kind of justified: after all, Loki does betray them all in the end. But what he starts to see clearly now is that most of the push for him to go darkside came from the people that later turned around to blame him for his crimes.

“I’ll associate with whoever the hell I feel like. At least Loki’s helping me avoid getting pulverized when we go on some stupid quest to destroy a peace treaty. Just because I’m not out to take over Asgard doesn’t mean I have to give up good company.”

“There is plenty of good company to be found in Asgard.”

This comes from Fandral, who’s eyeing Tony with a hint of roguish hunger and a raised eyebrow. Tony recognizes that look and almost laughs. He’s halfway tempted to take up the offer; it’s been way too long since he’d had a good lay. But the atmosphere in the room and their conversation is possibly the biggest turn-off he could have imagined so he just shakes his head.

“Well I’m happy with the one I’ve got.”

It’s only after he says it that he realises the implications of his reply and swallows down the sudden rush of blood to various parts of his body, starting with his face and ending with some very particular nether regions. It seems like the Warriors Three notice the slip too and there is a moment when all three of them just stare at Loki. To his credit, the demigod looks completely nonplussed by the entire thing, his face back to its impassive mask.

“Are you quite finished?”

The three men look to each other, obviously at a loss as to what to do next. Finally, Volstagg sighs and shakes his head, turning around to make his way out without a word. The other two shoot one more worried glance at Loki and Tony before following their friend, as silent as they’d come in.

“Well that was rude.” Tony quips, trying to tame the feeling of embarrassment that’s still vibrating in his chest. Jesus, it’s not like he’s some hormonal teenager. “They didn’t even say goodbye.”

Loki doesn’t reply. Instead, his eyes bore into Tony’s with such intensity that he blinks and looks away, trying to find something to look at so he wouldn’t have to bear their weight. After a moment Loki turns away and glides over to his favoured perch on Tony’s bed and picks up his tome. The engineer feels his entire body sag as  all the tension is suddenly released.

“You really have no self-preservation instincts.” Loki mutters as he thumbs a page of his book. “First you agree to venture into Jotunheim covered in nothing but bits of metal and then you announce to the most powerful warriors of Asgard that you would ally yourself with one they choose to despise and mistrust more than any other. With reason, as some recent revelations have demonstrated.”

“Yeah well that’s because what they were saying was utter bullshit.” Tony replies, walking back to his station at the forge to get his mind off the unpleasant encounter. “They obviously hate you because you use your brain to get ahead and they don’t understand how to compete with that. I don’t get how Thor ever tolerated them treating you like this.”

When Loki doesn’t reply Tony doesn’t think much of it, busy as he is trying to unscrew one of the panels on his helmet. It’s only when he looks up about a minute later and finds the God of Mischief staring at him with utter shock written all over his features that he straightens up, worried about whatever mess his over-active mouth has caused this time.

“You don’t truly believe that.” Loki mutters. “This is one of your ploys to get me to believe that you want to help me, to gain more of my trust.”

Tony knots his brows in confusion.

“No, that’s me being honest. Those guys are the biggest bullies I’ve ever had the displeasure of talking to. I’d probably pay to see the expression of utter rage on that woman’s face again, it was the most satisfying thing I’ve witnessed all day. And that includes having my upgraded transistor outperform the old model on the first run.”

_God, did he really think I was just pretending to hate them? It’s way too easy to do it for real. Nasty bigoted alien jocks._

Tony expects Loki to protest again or to smirk about how he’d always known he was superior and is glad to have it confirmed, but the demigod merely puts down his book and stands up.

“I… apologize Stark. I have matters to attend to.”

“Hey, look, I didn’t mean to say anything to insult you or anything, it’s just that those guys were _really_ annoying and—“

Loki disappears before he can finish his sentence and Tony’s left to stare into the now-empty spot.

Fucking magic.

\\\\\

Loki doesn’t reappear for hours, leaving Tony to work in an uneasy silence. He’s half-tempted to go wander around the palace at one point, but settles for finishing repairs first. He knows he’ll feel safer exploring as Iron Man anyway. Who knows when Odin might decide that Tony’s actually a security liability and use him as a target to practice on with his giant spear.

Finally, the magically upgraded Mark IX (or Mark 45, nickname: _Houdini_ , skipping all the specialized models to make room for this magically-enhanced new prototype) is ready for deployment. Tony feels his excitement build as he flexes the chip in his forearm and activates the shiny new design.

One by one the pieces of armour fly over to their designated spots on his body, connecting fluidly and covering his vulnerable frame. When the helmet closes and his HUD flickers on with a familiar whirling mess of blue light, Tony almost feels like he’s releasing a breath he’d been holding for the past few days. _I am Iron Man_. Nothing he’d ever said in his life could ring as true.

Everything looks to be functioning just fine. He flexes his limbs and tries to lift himself a few centimetres into the air using the lowest thrust he can manage. Looks like the added weight of the uru and his several enhancements since do not impede the general performance of the design and he lands back down on the ground with a clink.

He glances at the window and grins.

\\\\\

Loki’s mind is in turmoil.

When the mortal man (Stark. Tony Stark. A man with a _name_ and a mind like the Trickster’s never seen before.) tells him that his defence of Loki in the face of Sif and the Warriors Three had been genuine, he does not know quite what to do.

He can hear his own blood pulse in his ears as he teleports away to a secluded part of the mountains surrounding the city and simply stands for a few minutes, trying to collect his railing emotions. He’d waited _so long_ (his whole life) for someone to do just that: to pick Loki over anyone else, to understand his inherent need to know, to learn and to explore. To not see his ambition as a threat but as an _asset_. To fill that infinite void that he’d dubbed ‘friend’ in the core of his heart.

 But it’s terrifying. This is not how Loki had imagined acceptance and companionship. Where Stark’s mind is breathtaking, his reason to help Loki is dubious. Where his acceptance of the Trickster fills him with warmth, his claims of enmity with his future self make him feel cold. And above all that, Loki now knows that he is a monster. A beast that cannot even hope to receive respect or friendship. Why then, would someone who offers both appear in tandem with this news?

Without really thinking about it, Loki teleports again and realises that he is at the gateway point to Midgard, one of his secret passageways between realms. He creates a simple image of himself to remain in the forest reading a book so as to throw off Heimdall and steps through, focusing on his essence to traverse the weakened tear in the aether safely.

He does not know what he wants to attain with this trip. When he rematerializes on a desolate mountaintop somewhere near the pole of the Midgardian planet, he closes his eyes and lets his instinct reach out to his magic, allowing it to transport him to the right location. It is rare that his subconscious gets to play as big a part in his decisions but his mind has not been stable enough to perform powerful spells for the last few days.

When he opens his eyes again he is in a dark room, filled with the smell and taste of metal. At once, Loki knows he is not alone so he casts a concealment spell. He recognizes the place from his last incredibly brief visit and wonders why he’d felt compelled to return.

Anthony Edward Stark stands at a station surrounded by his A.I.s, soldering some piece of metal or other. The machines around him buzz with weary excitement and Loki has to remind himself that the beings are soulless- they are by far the liveliest machines he’d ever encountered. Tony’s humming as he works and looks far healthier than he’d had the last time Loki had dropped by to check the time-traveller’s claims. He wonders if the man had been harmed in some way previously and feels a strange echo of worry about not having checked.

He moves closer and observes a light emitting from the man’s chest through his white, sleeveless tunic. For a moment he is tempted to touch it. It looks exactly like the device in his guest’s Iron Man armour, but this one appears to be a _part_ of the mortal. There is much yet to learn about the former Merchant of Death, it seems.

Loki considers leaving before he gets discovered, but something compels him to stay and observe the man, so obviously in his element at his workshop. Whether it is Asgard or Earth, it appears as though Tony Stark feels most at home with some sort of tool in his hands. There is a strange and loving companionship between the robots and their creator, most obviously in his interactions with the voice in the walls, Jarvis.

When Tony receives a call from someone called ‘Rhodey’, Loki does not leave. In fact, he decides to follow the man even as he makes his way upstairs and greets the eponymous colonel Rhodes. The two embrace before a light-hearted admonishment from the other man for Tony to get some food and some sleep without the need for constant surveillance. They spend the next two hours sharing a meal and talking about things that Loki does not always understand (although Tony’s health seems to be a prominent topic as well as a recent poisoning, which again makes Loki’s stomach twist slightly).

When the woman (Pepper, according to the two men) finally arrives, Loki decides to make his exit. He teleports away quietly, back to the mountainside with its howling winds and its tear in the aether.

He stands there for a long time, contemplating what he’d seen and why he’d wanted to do so. Perhaps it is to understand _why_ Stark did what he did. To see whether a man like that is capable of ruthlessly pretending to be a friend so well that even the Liesmith himself cannot tell apart trickery and reality. Perhaps it is to see how a man like that changed over a few years, to decipher a mind that is the most intricate puzzle.

Loki cannot not quite decide what he’d ultimately learned, but he comes away with one overpowering question: how could they _ever_ have been enemies? How could Loki have missed out on an opportunity like this one, to get to know a creature of such infinite complexity? He recalls the unbearable stab of loneliness he’d glimpsed in the man’s mind while trying to read his memories. He recognises it as familiar, even though it is not as developed within himself yet.

 _I must know what happened_ , he resolves. _And I must not allow it to happen again._


	11. A Good Pair

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M SO SORRY FOR THE RIDICULOUS WAIT.  
> This may happen more often now. I'm on my way to having an actual PhD.  
> Thank you all for your comments! Again, even if I don't answer all of them, they still make my tear up and write and giggle.

It’s a fairly uneventful evening on Asgard, all things considered.

Frigga sits in her gilded chair on the balcony, a book on held lightly in her hands. She has to force herself to refrain from sneaking into the mortal’s room to check in on her son, perfectly aware that Loki sensed her presence earlier. He has since built up wards - to warn her rather than keep her out, she is sure. They may be weak, but they are a very obvious statement.

So she sits and attempts to forget her deep-seated worries about Loki’s state of mind, comforted by the petulance of his actions, by the son she remembers from centuries gone by.

When Odin tells her of Loki’s demands to have the prisoner released she is immediately more curious than concerned. Like her husband, she senses a disruption in the threads of Fate that stretch out from Yggdrasil itself, but rather than worry her they inspire a strange melancholy hope.

Frigga is a seamstress of the Fates, after all. That is what she tells Odin when he tries to convince her that they need to rid themselves of the mortal before he meddles in the affairs of the Nine Realms beyond repair. She knows that Tony Stark’s appearance is but a new pattern in the cloth, an unexpected braiding in her son’s life. While she can only see so far down this new path, it feels _right_ , like it was supposed to be there. Like a knot in a thread that was thin enough to snap soon. She resolves to allow Loki and the strange man some time before she interferes in anything.

 _They make a good pair_.

The Man of Iron is not what she expected. No, he is far beyond it: he is _salvation_. She watches as her second son works and she sees his smile, so unlike his usual one filled with resigned resentment. Where Frigga expects fury, she sees focus. Where she expects bitterness, she finds fascination. It feels as thought the Loki of her past, the child who laughed and ran around alongside Thor through the palace still lives. She does not quite understand how Tony Stark achieved it, but he has obviously revived the curious young boy that she would sit with in her rooms, discussing magic and mysteries and questions that Thor never thought to ask.

Frigga smiles as she turns the page of her book… and then pauses, her expression falling instantly. Her eyes snap up.

Something in the skies of Asgard makes the hairs on the back of her hand rise and she scans the scattered clouds, worry heaving its way into her mind. Asgard may be on high alert since the coronation, but few in the city remain with the ability to recognize magical threats until they are too close to stop. She is likely one of the first to become aware of such an enemy, if Odin is distracted with a meeting inside.

A strange, whizzing noise catches her attention somewhere high above and she barely has the chance to turn her head before something shoots past her, slamming into the ground of her gardens below. She rushes to the edge of her balcony to take a closer look and is greeted with a keen sense of déjà vu.

“You seem to have penchant for destroying the palace with your landings, Tony Stark.”

The golden-red helmet lifts slightly off the ground and Frigga can imagine the defeated look on the mortal’s face without even having to see it. His mask retracts, revealing the intelligent amber eyes beneath while the man struggles to sit up in the small crater he created during the crash.

“Yeah sorry about that Ms…”

“Frigga. Queen of Asgard.”

She watches with amusement as the Man of Iron perks up and tries to scramble to his feet. Thankfully the crash seems to have done far less damage to his armour than the first time.

“Holy shi—I mean, sorry Ma’am, your Highness, I swear it was an accident. I’m not really sure what happened to the suit- must be the upgrades.”

Frigga stays silent with amusement, attempting to decipher the lines on the mortal’s face. Something in her heart tells her that he is no threat and she is not one to disregard her instincts. And yet…

“Your armour has changed.” She remarks taking a step forward and ignoring how the man’s shoulders instantly go rigid. “There is something… Asgardian coursing through it. I sensed it before and I can feel it only slightly now.”

“That was Loki.” He stutters. “He gave me some metal, some conductor for magic, whatever the hell that even means. It’s all over the armour. Look, I’ll just be on my way no—“

“Uru?” Frigga’s mouth hangs open against her own will. “Surely you could not have forged anything with it.”

“Yeah, that thing.” Tony steps back and Frigga follows him with her eyes. “Seriously, all I’ve been doing is fixing my armour. I’m not hear to cause any trouble or anything.”

She grabs his arm before he can escape and senses the thrum of the metal deep below. Tony’s eyes are wide but he stays put, like a startled hare.

“Surely not.” She whispers. “Only heat comparable to that of a dying star can melt Uru and even then only when done right. And yet I sense it. It _sings_.”

She lets go of him and steps back. The mortal suddenly looks different in her eyes.

“How did you crash?”

“I was just flying.” He says. Then he frowns. “I wanted to go faster, test the upgrades. Then I felt real weird and suddenly I was… miles away from where I’d been before I’m sure. Jesus I barely even felt it accelerate. I don’t know how it happened. Anyway, I was going way too fast by that point and way too close to ground to stop. Must have accidentally changed the trajectory somehow. I don’t have Friday to help me with these things anymore and—you don’t honestly care about these things never mind. Sorry about the garden.”

“It’s alright.” She says. Then: “Thank you.”

“Huh, you must have really hated those flowers.”

Frigga chuckles. “No. On the contrary, I’m very fond of them. I am thanking you for… for Loki. For whatever you’ve done for him. He is different. Better.”

The mortal opens his mouth to reply, his expression confused, but then it changes to something unreadable. He presses his lips together tightly.

“I hope so.”

“I may not trust you completely but I understand my son better than anyone in Asgard.” She says and pierces him with her strictest maternal stare. “You are good for him, Man of Iron. And if you continue to be such, I may yet forgive the destruction of my favourite flowerbed.”

Tony Stark stares at her for a second and she gets the feeling that he has a million words waiting to tumble from his mouth but then he shakes his head.

“I’ll try my best.”

“Good. You might want to figure out how you managed to tame the most unworkable and most magically potent metal in the nine realms before anything else. If I’m not mistaken, you have surrounded yourself with material that not only channels magic, but bends to your will despite your inability to control it.”

“Huh?”

“Your crash. You didn’t accelerate, Man of Iron. You channelled the magic imbued in the uru and teleported yourself. You might not have any magical talent but you can certainly manipulate whatever power is stored in the metal.”

“ _What_?”

Frigga sighs. “Do not advertise it. My husband is already thirsting for your punishment but I’d rather have you do whatever you were sent to do here. Do not give him more reason to suspect you further.”

“What do you mean I can—“

“Ask my son.”

She gives him her most piercing stare.

“Ask my son and give him something to ponder. Give him some meaning, some _companionship_. Do not misunderstand, I am not at all amused by your sudden intrusion in our lives, but unlike Odin I see the good you can do for him. Odin was never what Loki needed and Thor… changed. I, however, am his mother and I will always want what’s best for him. This is why you’re still alive- why you’re allowed to roam free and to crush my favourite orchids without retribution.”

She smirks.

“So go on, Man of Iron. Keep your armour and your new magic and your freedom. But remember that you have it only as long as you are the joy written on my son’s face- the joy that I can no longer bring about.”

With this she turns away and walks slowly back indoors, her hands shaking. Moments later she hears the deep thrum and a roar that announce their strange guest’s departure. Frigga sighs.

She can only hope that her instincts will remain true to her.

///

Loki materializes back on Asgard in the middle of its deepest forest and releases a deep breath. It is always a difficult task to traverse the aether between realms without the Bifrost, more so now that his mind is in such turmoil.

He dispels the image of himself he’d left to distract Heimdall and collapses to the ground. There are only three days left until they must enact his brother’s hare-brained scheme of attacking Jotunheim. And then what?

Stark has given him nothing to make him worth keeping around, even if his story of being a time-traveler is true. Yet now, more than ever, Loki is reluctant to let him go. He feels he cannot, even as his rational mind tells him that he _should_.

And yes, Loki has always been a careful, conniving character. His survival instincts had always won out against any emotional attachments he may have held, even those for his supposed _family_. Surely their recent betrayal should give him even more reason to dispel the nuisance that the mortal presents him with.

Yet now, more than even the first time he’d laid eyes on Tony Stark, Loki finds he can’t summon the will to want anything more than to see him again. To spend another day, another evening conversing about the physical sciences and hearing the mortal’s snarky remarks, so reminiscent of his own. To feel accepted above all others. To be treated as an equal rather than as a potential threat.

He thinks back to what he’d witnessed on Midgard.

A mortal, just a man. Flawed and broken and arrogant.

A mystery, absolutely _fascinating_. A mind that seems to function in multiple dimensions at once. Broken, like Loki. Curious, like Loki. Accepting of him. Interesting- oh so _interesting_.

Loki heaves a broken huff, the tail-end of resigned laughter.

It may yet be the end of him but he wants to trust this mortal man. He wants to believe in whatever ‘better’ future his other self has laid out for him. Because otherwise all he has is a desperate need to impress Odin despite being fully aware of his own inadequacy, his heritage and Odin’s very failure at being a good man and a good king. Because Loki built his world around being a good-enough son, better than Thor. Now that the notion is impossible he feels that he may fracture completely unless he has something else to turn his mind to.

He sits there for a long while, on the damp forest moss leaning against a tree. He stares and thinks and drifts in and out of awareness. Tony Stark’s amber eyes follow him no matter where his thoughts turn and Loki finds that perhaps he begins to understand what he wants.

///

Tony’s careful this time.

If what Frigga- the freaking _Queen of Asgard_ (and Loki’s mom, a way harder job than he might’ve given credit for)- said is true, then apparently his own armour is now a ticking time bomb of random magical firepower. If he could accidentally teleport hundreds of meters ahead without even meaning to, then who knows what else he could do completely by accident.

… it’s fucking amazing is what it is. Tony can do _magic_.

… nah it’s terrifying. He’s not really doing magic, he’s just hijacking whatever the hell’s in the metal he’s coated his whole damn armour in. Maybe Loki had planned it- had expected him to be so utterly inept as to accidentally kill himself. (He knows that’s not it.)

Asgard is beautiful.

Tony had really just wanted to feel the freedom of flying as Iron Man again but now that he’s there, he realises just how much he’d simply wanted to see the city from up above.  A brand new otherworldly realm made of magic and legend. Tony may be a rational, scientific mind, but there’s plenty of emotional space in his heart for it to stutter the second he lays eyes on the edge of the world, where water plummets into infinite space like in the Niagara Falls.

Really, if he hadn’t been so distracted by losing control of the suit and crashing in Frigga’s garden, he might’ve had something like a spiritual revelation zooming around above what is the craziest view he’s ever seen. He takes it all in now, as much as he can.

Then the suit begins to descend.

Tony panics for a bit because he sure as hell didn’t decide to do that and he’s now aware of the likelihood that he’s not in complete control, but nothing about the change in trajectory is sudden or appears dangerous. He decides to not fight it too much and just follow along to see where he ends up.

When he lands, gently, amongst some trees in a remote forest on the other side of the floating city, he’s pretty much just doing it out of curiosity.

And when he sees Loki’s astonished stare as the Trickster stands up from his spot by a lone, abandoned tree, Tony feels he might finally understand why his magically upgraded suit might have decided to take him there.

“Hey there Lokes.” He says and can’t help but grin, his mask opening up to reveal his wolfish teeth. “I’ll be honest, I kind of missed that scowl.”

He expects dismissal and silence, perhaps a frustrated glare. But Loki just looks at him, his expression unreadable.

All of a sudden the demigod stands up and takes three powerful strides towards Tony. The engineer stumbles back a little but Loki is undeterred. He stops inches away, his eyes searing as he searches Tony’s face.

Loki lifts a hand and cups the engineer’s cheek, still with that intense stare. Tony feels his breath catch in his throat and the world stops for a moment, full of anticipation. The demigod’s eyes are like lasers as they flicker all over Tony’s face.

_Are you gonna—_

Then Loki lets go and steps back, his lips twitching, Tony finds he can’t read whether its amusement or frustration.

“I apologize for the extended absence.” He says with complete nonchalance. “We have an incursion to prepare for, do we not?”

 _Oh you twisted, cunning bastard._ Tony thinks, even as he remembers Frigga’s words :

**_“You are good for him, Man of Iron.”_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT: good lord I was so drunk when I wrote half of this. I wonder if you can tell.


	12. Convergence and Defenestration (reprise)

“So, uru.”

“Hm?”

“What is it _really_?”

Loki casts Tony a dry look that has nothing but exasperation written all over it. Clearly the Trickster doesn’t grasp the true meaning behind the question.

“I told you already: it’s a conductor for magic, the best there is. Beyond that it might boast sheer resilience and strength, though often that is due to the spells that are woven through it by its wielder.”

“Can it… perform magic though?” Tony licks his lips, trying to piece together a question that could communicate what he wants to know. “As in… can it do things with magic instead of just being a shield or a conductor?”

Loki pauses.

“… yes.” He replies finally and catches Tony’s gaze which is burning with curiosity. “If I were to wear your armour, I might be able to perform spells by simply drawing on the energies stored within the metal. Thor’s hammer also works as an amplifier… no, rather, a _lens_ for his power, focusing it. Uru shapes magic as well as storing it, although the use of its stored power then largely depends on the abilities of its user.”

Tony nods and falls silent, contemplating Loki’s words.

It’s a few hours after they both make it back to the palace, Loki unusually silent. They go back to work, with Tony sheepishly fixing the new dents in the metal and Loki barely noticing them- or else choosing not to comment. The demigod goes back to his ‘magical tomes of magic’ as though nothing ever happened in-between.

 Tony’s itching to ask him about the brief but undeniable moment of sexual tension they shared in the forest but doesn’t dare to; it’s _Loki_ , the guy lives and breathes manipulation. The fact that Tony’s previously mild admiration of the demigod’s looks is now a full-blown ocean of heat in his groin can only be a testament to it.

Tony’s not an idiot: Loki’s attractive, intelligent and currently not necessarily a villain that he needs to avoid or arrest (of course there’s the whole saving the world and the timelines thing, but really that’s all a big mess anyway and it’s not like someone gave him a set of instructions on what he should or shouldn’t do). He’s just broken up with Pepper and if he’d have to choose a night with someone he already knows, maybe it wouldn’t be too far out there to suggest that Loki’s godly, _sexy_ scheming brain would be the perfect fit for rebound flirting and sex.

… He won’t admit it to anyone, much less himself obviously. Tony Stark has been a sucker for drop-dead gorgeous intellectuals before. If there’s one thing he can’t stay away from it’s spunk and brains: Pepper is just a testament to that. But Pepper was also more than a fling and Loki—

“Why do you ask?”

Tony shakes his head, barely dragging himself out of his thoughts.

“My armour did a thing today.” He says and licks his lips again. Loki’s eyes dart quickly to follow the movement and— _no, for fuck’s sake I’m just imagining things_. “I landed in your mom’s orchids. She said I teleported, whatever the hell that actually means.”

Loki stops and stares at him.

“You performed magic?”

“I wanted to go faster and apparently I went break-the-laws-of-physics fast. Yeah, I think it was something like that. Your mom—“

“You met my _mother_?”

“Yeah.” Tony pauses. “She’s a pretty scary woman. Amazing, but scary. She said I channelled something in the metal. Now that I think about it, it has felt a little _different_ with the suit on, like a hum or something—“

He’s cut off by Loki’s sudden, rigid presence beside him. The Trickster has his hand placed on one of the suit’s vambraces, his brows furrowed with intense focus. After a moment, he lifts it and turns to stare at Tony. His gaze is consuming and Tony finds he can’t hold it for very long.

“What? What is it?” he asks, trying to find a corner to shuffle into so he wouldn’t burst into flames under the demigod’s eyes. “Look, I’ve checked and it doesn’t seem to be interfering with the suit’s processors, at least not as far as I can tell. Whatever happened, it was some magical crap that I can’t figure out yet.”

“Uru is not just a metal.” Loki says quietly, the intensity never leaving his eyes although he does look away from Tony, choosing to focus on the armour instead. “There is evidence of… _will_. Thor’s hammer can only be lifted by him because it senses him. Odin could overpower the connection if he wanted to due to his magical prowess but the weapon itself is what determines the bond. Of course, usually this connection is born of the fact that its user is a being _of_ magic such as Thor or Odin. Think of it as resonance- of light or sound or matter- except this resonance has a preference for certain creatures and minds natural to it.”

“… Alright.” Tony says, cautiously, because he’s not quite sure where Loki’s taking this yet. “What has this got to do with me? I’m obviously not a wizard or anything, you said so yourself and so did the Queen. So what gives?”

“The fact that you managed to forge anything with it is already an impossibility and yet you did.” Loki takes a deep breath. “The energy in the suit is mine and mine alone: I burned it into the runes and I channelled it through the atoms of the uru. Yet it has bent to you, despite your lack of affinity for the _seidr_. I would think it is the part of my other soul that inhabits your mind but… that should not allow you to work the metal. Not even Odin boasts being able to mould uru.”

“Well maybe it just felt like it.” Tony throws his hands up. “Because apparently ‘ _metal has feelings_ ’ now. Is my suit just going to just continue blasting off random bursts of the supernatural then?”

“Perhaps.” Loki grasps the vambrace again and this time there is a soft, greenish glow that surrounds the metal. “And you might not be so far off with your theory. It is said that the dwarves of Nidavelir can work uru because they have an instinct for it, a scientific understanding that others have never managed to grasp. Having witnessed your capabilities with artificial intelligence and engineering, I would hazard a guess that you possess a similar talent.”

 _Whoa, what’s this?_ There’s a reverence in Loki’s voice and it’s something Tony never heard before. What’s more, it’s directed at _him_.

Then the demigod lets go of the piece of armour and turns to face him. Tony suddenly realises just how close they are and he can instantly feel every muscle in his body tense up, unsure whether it’s nerves or anticipation.

Suddenly he knows he wants this _so_ _bad_. He can already feel the way Loki’s smooth, cool skin would feel beneath his fingers when they’re free to roam wherever they wish. He can imagine the delight in seeing that devilish smirk directed at him and him alone, a promise of pleasure like he’s never experienced before. Because Loki is a _God_ and somehow Tony knows that they’d slot together like puzzle pieces, worshipping and challenging and kneeling at each other’s altars. His breath catches in his throat because he knows what’s about to happen.

“You are fascinating, mortal.” Loki almost purrs, reaching out capture his chin with his long fingers. His eyes glint with mischief but he doesn’t move any closer, holding them in place in a moment drenched with anticipation for what feels like forever though it’s probably less than two seconds.

And Tony’s never been very good at the whole patience thing.

“My name is _Tony_.” He almost growls and then he crashes their lips together.

He feels like a drowning man fighting for air. They move together, fighting for dominance and enjoying every moment of the other’s resistance. It’s not clumsy so much as it’s too intense for them to care if their teeth click against each other or if they graze the other’s lip with a bit too much ferocity. It’s fucking _perfect_.

And then it all goes to shit.

\--

_“ **Please tell me you’re going to appeal to my humanity**.”_

_“ **Uh, actually I’m planning to threaten you**.”_

_The man before him looks remarkably fragile and yet somehow completely unconcerned by the fact that he’s facing a God armed with an infinity stone._

_“ **You should have left your armour on for that.** ”_

_“ **Yeah**.” The mortal shrugs, sauntering casually down the steps towards him. “ **It’s seen a bit of mileage and you’ve got the er… little stick of destiny**.”_

_He smirks down at the sceptre in his his hands._

_“ **Would you like a drink?** ” the man asks, still infuriatingly unconcerned by…_

_\--_

… Loki’s…

\--

_… presence in the room. Something feels off in his thoughts but he pushes it away and grins._

_“ **Stalling me won’t change anything.** ”_

_“ **No no no: threatening**.” He- _ Stark? _points at one of the numerous bottles on the shelf. “ **You sure you don’t want a drink? I’m having one.** ”_

_Something in his mind still itches. He can’t quite put a finger on it._

_“ **The Chitauri are coming, nothing will change that**.” He says, walking over to stare at the spot in the sky where the portal will soon tear it open. Strange, the delight he should feel at the notion of victory is missing for some reason. Instead he begins to feel worry, dark and heavy, weighing in the pit of his stomach. The sceptre suddenly burns in his hands. “ **What have I to fear?** ”_

_“ **The Avengers**.”_

_Stark looks up from his glass, their eyes finally meeting properly…_

_\--_

… those eyes now beneath eyelids as their lips slide together hot and wet…

\--

 **_“… it’s what we call ourselves_ ** _.” He rolls his eyes in a mocking fashion. “ **Sort of like a team. ‘Earth’s Mightiest Heroes’ sort of thing**.”_

_Loki smirks. “ **I’ve met them.”**_

_“ **Yeah, takes us a while to get any traction I’ll give you that**.” The sheepish, slightly nervous grin he gets in return is delicious._

_Then Stark’s eyes turn deadly serious as Loki paces away, trying to keep the smirk on his face as genuine as possible in order to hide the sudden, unsettling feeling in his gut._

_“ **But… let’s do a headcount here; your brother: the demigod. The super soldier: a living legend who sort of lives up to the legend. A man with breathtaking anger management issues, a couple of master assassins and you…”** Stark points at him with an actual flourish. **“…big fella, you’ve managed to piss off every one of them**.”_

_“ **That was the plan.”**_

_“ **Not a great plan.”** Stark begins to walk toward him and Loki feels dizzy for a moment. “ **When the come- and they will- they’ll come for you**.”_

_“ **I have an army.”**_

Thanos’ eyes watch him, cold, merciless.

_“ **We have a hulk**.”_

_“ **Oh, I thought the beast had wandered off**.”_

_“ **Look, you’re missing the point. There is no throne, no version of this where you come out on top. Maybe your army comes and maybe it’s too much for us but it’s all on you…** ”_

The Mad Titan almost, _almost_ looks reluctant when Loki’s scream dies down into a whimper and that just makes it worse. Because he knows that the torture won’t cease regardless.

_“ **… because if we can’t protect the Earth, you can be damn well sure we’ll avenge it**.”_

_The moment of dizziness is gone and all that’s left inside Loki is a pure hatred for the man before him, so strong that it feels unnatural. It comes out of nowhere but he doesn’t have time or reason to question it._

_“ **How will your friends have time for me,”** he almost growls, the threat bubbling in every word. “ **When they are so busy fighting you?”**_

_Then he places the sceptre right in the centre of the mortal’s chest, expecting to feel it sink slightly into the smooth flesh beneath which lies a heart ripe for his domination._

_Instead, there is a strange clinking noise. Loki’s mind almost clears for a moment in sheer shock. He tries it again only to feel the same lack of… mind for the mind stone to claim._

_“ **This usually works.”** _

_“ **Oh, well, performance issues…  not uncommon. One in five—“**_

Kill him _, the voice in his head supplies with unprecedented fervour and suddenly Loki’s rage is back. He grabs the mortal by his throat…_

_\--_

… the beard scratches against his fingers and his cheek and Loki finds that he relishes it…

\--

_… and throws him down to the ground. Somehow he fails to break any of the man’s bones but it doesn’t stop him from stalking over to finish the job._

_“ **You will all fall before me.”** He snarls, Stark’s throat so incredibly breakable in his grip. He could just squeeze a little and it would all be over in an instant. _

_Something stops him however and he strides over to the massive window, tossing the mortal through it as though he weighs no more than a feather…_

\--

Mortal and demigod break apart, breathing heavily. Tony’s blood is still pounding in his ears as well as some far more interesting regions but he can’t quite focus on how turned on he is because _What the mighty fucking hulk was that?_

He looks at Loki who looks absolutely shell-shocked and in a moment Tony realises that he wasn’t the only one who saw- and felt- the memory. (And despite everything he’s immeasurably proud of the dishevelled look the demigod is sporting after their ridiculously hot make-out session)

“Loki…” he says, stuck between wanting to just kiss him again and trying to find something to say that might make things begin to make sense.

Before he can do anything at all, Loki gives him the most _haunted_ look he’s ever seen on a person’s face and then…

Then he’s gone.

“Shit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lol what am I doing. I apologise for the sheer amount of this chapter that was just lifted from the movie but damn, it felt good to write it out. 
> 
> I also apologise for not answering some comments, life got ahold of me. I will do better this time I promise. Please tell me if this chapter flowed well for you guys I'm honestly not too sure! It was very stream-of-consciousness type of writing on my part.
> 
> These boys make me grin like a lunatic I swear.


	13. The Absence of Mischief

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I FINISHED MY EXAMS. Sorry about the wait. Y'all are brilliant. ILU. That's not a blanket statement I genuinely appreciate and adore the comments and the fact that someone's still reading this story.
> 
> I'm unsure about this chapter but it begged to be written so I guess here it is? Any lack of sense herein I will attribute to my brain being absolutely drained post the three-month-hell that was this semester.
> 
> This means feedback is doubly needed. Feel free to tear me apart if you need to. I keep feeling like what I'm writing isn't great but no matter how many times I go back to it, never seems to get better.
> 
> Also Thor <3 I want to give him more attention.
> 
> Merry Christmas!

Thor leaves dinner early that night.

He can hear Fandral’s laughter echo behind him and can imagine the grin Sif hides behind her scowl, attempting to look disapproving at whatever joke the Warriors Three have made at the expense of all propriety. There are few things that make Thor happier than the company of his best friends and companions in the most dangerous (and thrilling) of quests. Moments like this would usually warm his heart.

Yet something dark and heavy weighs in the pit of the Thunder God’s stomach. It is an ominous shadow that appeared on the day he first spoke to Tony Stark of Midgard and it has only grown since, seeming to gnaw at his mind more with each passing day, with each step closer to the planned incursion.

They _will_ go to Jotunheim on the morrow- it is decided and Thor knows he will never change his mind. The very image of the cold, monstrous red slits that pass for Frost Giant eyes awakens a rage in his heart which cannot be quelled. And yet something also unsettles him about the plan, something he can’t quite put his finger on. It must be the fact that by protecting Asgard he must directly disobey his father (and while that seems like a plausible and sufficient reason for his unease, Thor knows it’s not quite as simple).

His growing uncertainty is not helped by the fact that time seems to have the opposite effect on Sif and the three greatest heroes of Asgard. His friends, while anxious at first, only grow more confident with each passing day that their plan is not discovered by Odin, who is too busy with an affair concerning trade with Alfheim. Thor is loathe to express his doubts when he initially suggested the scheme. He finds he needs council.

He needs Loki.

Loki, who is holed up in the mortal’s chambers and has not appeared to join Thor for breaking fast or dinner since the Man of Iron crashed into their lives. For six days the God of Thunder exercised patience fuelled by his stubbornness – _if Loki chooses the intruder over his own brother then **so be it**_ – but he finds his resentment slowly melting away. Loki has been his one source of trusted wisdom throughout life and Thor _needs_ him.

He knows that they drifted apart in recent centuries, he is not foolish enough to believe otherwise. It saddens him sometimes, but it’s difficult to talk to someone who consistently twists words and considers themselves intellectually superior, whether Loki is correct in his judgement or not. Thor is mildly aware that things are far more complicated than that, but he is also far too busy carving himself into a righteous, strong and courageous King to attempt fixing bonds that may be beyond fixing.

( _Loki would have told him that Asgard needs their king to be **wise** , too_.)

Now though, he’ll take whatever version of Loki he can get. The siege of Jotunheim approaches fast and Thor cannot lead a group of warriors if his heart is weighed down by doubt and shadow. Loki may be the only person who can tell him where the strange darkness comes from, to ease his mind as he had done in the past, long ago though that may have been.

So Thor bites down on his pride and makes his way up to the chambers of their prisoner-turned-guest, convinced that his brother will still be locked away working on his spellwork, magicking armour that will apparently allow a mortal man to face a hoard of Frost Giants.

And here’s another thing: Tony Stark.

Thor wants to hate him. By all rights, he _should_. On paper the mortal is probably responsible for each and every thing that is causing Thor undue anxiety: his failed coronation, his brother’s absence, potentially even the Frost Giant attack itself.

Yet no matter how hard he tries Thor can’t feel anything other than curiosity, perhaps even sympathy. His instinct tells him but one thing when he hears Tony Stark speak: that this is a man to be trusted, one he could call Shieldbrother. Whether through trickery or honesty, it gives the Thunder God pause.

He finally reaches his destination and stops for a moment, settling the black hole in his gut and tensing his muscles as though they could steady his nerves in the same way they steady his fist.

“Loki!” He calls and, having no intention of waiting to be received, pushes the wooden door open.

“He’s not here.”

Thor finds himself face to face with the mortal who is leaning over some scrolls laid out all across a massive table, his brow furrowed.

“Is he not aiding you in enchanting your weaponry?” Thor asks, more than a little disappointed. Then: “Your eyes have grown darker Man of Iron.”

They have. It’s striking how much more harrowed Tony Stark looks since the day they shook hands in the very same room. There are heavy bags resting on his cheeks and his gaze is wild, hair unkempt and sticking out in all directions.

“Couldn’t sleep.” The mortal supplies, running his hands over what Thor surmises to be sketches and plans for machinery inside his suit of armour. “The Green Queen hasn’t turned up for about two days now.”

“My brother has not been with you?”

“No.” Tony sighs. “I assume he’s hard to get ahold of when he doesn’t want to be found.”

Thor frowns. As far as he’s aware, no one else had seen Loki for the past few days either.

“If you have harmed him in any way—“

“I didn’t do squat.” Tony interrupts him and there is anger lacing his words. “Everyone in this place seems to think I’m the bad guy and I’m _tired_ of it. Look, I tried my best I really did, and maybe my best isn’t enough- God knows I’ve been told that more times than the number of mornings I’ve woken up hungover. But I didn’t fucking choose to be here and maybe all I want is to go home and have DUM-E spray me head-to-toe with a fire extinguisher because I miss my damn lab and my home and my—my friends.”  

He stumbles over the last word, obviously overwhelmed by the lack of sleep and the stress of the past week.

“… sorry.” Tony adds after a moment with a sigh, running a hand over his stubble. “I know you’ve got no reason to trust me. I just… just wish it wasn’t like this.”

Thor is silent, subdued by the emotional outburst and lacking the conviction to reply with any sort of suspicion or anger. Underneath it all, however, a sense of worry brews.

“Do you have any idea what mischief my brother may be engaged in?” He asks finally, earnestly. He may not know how to react to the emotions of his prisoner, but nothing can ever quell the love he bears for Loki or the worry that comes along with it.

“I don’t. I’m sorry.”

And he definitely sounds it. Thor looks at him and thinks that it would be difficult to fake regret to the degree that Tony Stark’s face is screaming it right now. His heart plummets further.

“We must venture to Jotunheim tomorrow. Loki was supposed to be at my side.”

“Look, I can’t help you Point Break. He’ll either show or he won’t. I’ve got my suit all fixed up though so I promise you I’ll be there to make up for it in case he doesn’t.”

Then, despite the bags under his eyes and the invisible burden weighing down on his shoulders, the Man of Iron grins at Thor. And the God of Thunder grins back, having absolutely no idea why.

“I apologise, Tony Stark of Midgard.” He says suddenly and Tony almost drops the quill he’s holding. “I believe you to be an honourable man. It was not right of me to put such a burden on you as to face the Frost Giants when you are no more than a mortal, one I should protect rather than endanger. My anger was unearned.”

“Er, that’s alright?” Tony stammers but Thor only continues:

“I can feel it when I speak to you: my heart and my hammer call out to you as Shieldbrother. Perhaps my brother sensed it first and I was behind, as I always am in dealings of magic. You are no longer under oath to join us tomorrow.”

“I think I’d really rather go through with it now that I’m—“

“However I do have one thing to ask of you.”

Tony stops, sensing the weight in Thor’s words and nods. His confusion is put aside for a moment.

Thor takes in a deep breath and then exhales it, clenching his fists at his sides.

“I would go to Loki but in this you are right: he is no more than the shadow in a drop of water when he wants to be. Yet I am in dire need of counsel. I know that the best way to protect Asgard is to punish Laufey, to show him that he has no power in the face of the Allfather’s wrath. Yet… in my heart there is a shadow, like the darkness paving the floors of Hel. Even Mjolnir weighs heavy in my hand. I know what I must do yet how can I lead my friends to battle when I cannot find the certainty to take a step?”

Thor stops, sensing that he has exhausted himself with baring his soul. He looks to the mortal and hangs his head, suddenly feeling every bit of the failure that his words describe.

“I…” Tony clears his throat, his discomfort clear but then his face morphs to one of resolve. “If I were being honest, I’d say it’s dumb as hell to do what you’re planning to do tomorrow and I really can’t see why you’d risk a peace treaty like that.”

He sees Thor’s mouth open in protest and holds up his hand.

“… but at the same time, _I get it_. If I ever thought there was some way to scare away the bad people that threaten the things I love, I’d probably storm the place too. Hell I’d wipe it off the face of the Earth if I could. But it’s not that simple. Sometimes the bad thing doesn’t go away just because you smash it with a hammer. Sometimes that makes it worse.”

“The Frost Giants are _monsters_ ; they deserve to be wiped out.” Thor growls.

“There was a time when _I_ was the monster that some kid on the other side of the world was afraid of because the last thing their parents probably saw before they died was my name plastered all over the weapon that killed them. It’s never that easy.”

“You will see for yourself what they are capable of tomorrow. They will not show you the mercy nor understanding that you would.”

“Maybe.” Tony shrugs. “But you asked me why you feel wrong about attacking an entire race of beings because of a war that happened centuries ago. My answer is that you know you’re doing it more because of your hurt pride than the people you want to defend. I might not know Frost Giants that well but I doubt you do either. Maybe, before you take that first swing tomorrow, try to listen first. You’d be surprised by what a monster can tell you.”

 “That is what you believe. You do not know of our history.”

“No, but I really think this is what Loki would have wanted to tell you. I also think he wouldn’t have done it.”

Thor looks thoughtful for a moment and while Tony doesn’t think he’s managed to quite get the point across, he hopes it was enough to get the gears turning.

“Perhaps you are right, perhaps it is my pride that leads me rather than my honour.” Thor finally concedes and Tony almost does a double-take. “I do not believe that you will find anything to surprise you concerning the Jotuns, however. We shall see tomorrow. I thank you for your council.”

Thor nods to him and Tony barely collects himself enough to nod back. He hadn’t expected things to be this calm after what he’d said. The God of Thunder turns around to leave and just then Tony says:

“He’ll be there, you know. He will.” _I hope so._

Thor smiles, but it’s strained. “Yes. I hope so too.”

_\\\\\_

_Like fuck he’ll be there_ , Tony thinks once Thor has closed the door behind him.

It might just be the pessimist inside him, but he’s pretty sure that he just messed up the entire time-travel thing already. For one, he made out with the guy he was supposed to fix and it is a truth universally acknowledged that anything Tony touches is broken the moment he does so. For another, Loki apparently witnessed the one memory they had between them that Tony would have rather burned straight out of his brain than let anyone look at, so there was that.

He can only guess where the Trickster God is or what he is up to, but it’s probably far from what can in any way be healthy for this timeline.

Tony is completely alone for two days with nothing but the Iron Man suit to distract him. He tries wandering around the palace a couple of times but always ends up lost or back where he started, all doors but his own impenetrable and nothing but a few guards in sight. He wonders if it’s magic or something because he never seems to get anywhere no matter how far he walks.

He flies around a bit too, but is still wary of actually landing somewhere and talking to anyone and really, all he cares about is finding Loki. That, he soon realises, is the definition of impossible so he gives up and goes back to his room, trying to see if he could figure out the runes that the Trickster had carved into his suit. He’s far too nervous about Jotunheim to do any more than that in the end anyway.

Loki probably hates him.

The kiss still burns in his memory. The part of him that is a dumb teenager revels in the memory and plays it back to himself with a kind of awe: _I made out with a freaking God, the forbidden fruit and it was hot and he’s just the_ best thing _and I think I kind of like h_ —

The part of him that still retains any sense is basically just a large stick continuously smacking him over the head: _you idiot, you can’t keep it in your pants for one goddamn second, he’s the enemy and now he can hold this over you and you had_ almost _gotten through to him and everything._

He tries to reach out to Loki’s Horcrux-soul-piece in his brain but there is only silence. He wonders if maybe everything up until now had been a fever-dream. But with every passing second he’s still in Asgard and the attack on Jotunheim approaches.

Tony failed, as usual. Given a chance to set the world right he failed and isn't that just _typical_. He doesn’t think Loki will come because he _saw_ the look on his eyes before the Trickster disappeared.

Maybe some part of him is disappointed in himself because he had a chance to save the world and didn’t do it. Some part of him just misses Loki. He doesn’t care enough to stifle it. He may have lost a timeline but he also lost a friend and he has enough balls to admit that to himself.

All he can do now is salvage whatever’s left of the wreckage, starting with Thor Odinsson and his hare-brained attack on a land of Giant Ice People. It’s that thought that finally gives him enough peace to fall asleep before the Day That Changed Everything.


	14. The Bifrost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Arghkj;sdlg;sasuhfa;sf I really don't have time to write this but here it is and all because of the amount of wonderful comments I received for the last one you're all gr9.
> 
> I know I keep promising action but that's because I'm personally invested in getting them all there ASAP and I'm happy to say that this is where the truly crazy-paced story begins and I'm so HAPPY.
> 
> Y'all are angels, this one's for anyone who feels the Frost and Iron in their blood.

It takes Tony a good two minutes as well as half a lifetime’s supply of willpower to unglue his eyelids once some semblance of awareness slings him back to his bizarre current reality. It feels like he’s been sleeping for _days_ and while all his muscles are about as useful and mobile as a bag of lead, his brain feels fresh- better than it has in ages.

He’s not at all surprised to find himself in the room-slash-forge that has already become his own special kind of prison. He figures it’s only reasonable to accept delusional things like time-travel after being stuck in Asgard for seven days as well as a sexy encounter with a demigod ice-giant. Besides, none of his other nightmares have ever involved anything nearly as convoluted as this. The New York attack had always been enough for his self-destructive brain.

Tony groans as he sits up and runs a hand over his face. The light coming through his window is warm but weak- it’s probably late afternoon already. He imagines Thor won’t bother knocking down his door until proper night-time when Odin and Frigga are asleep. He’s got some time left to himself, a few hours still to prepare for the sure clusterfuck that the night will bring.

He’s had lots of time to think about what he needs to do to avoid fucking up worse than he already has. Needless to say he’s drawing a blank. He sends out another tirade of expletives at the ghost of Loki inside his head: for putting him in this situation, for not giving him better instructions, for _fucking off when Tony needs him most_.

He knows he can’t stop Thor or his band of medieval jocks from going and he knows he won’t be much use when they get there- the most he can do is stay alive. He knows that Thor can’t really be Thor without learning the lessons that Jane and Selvig taught him in the original timeline and yet there’s no guarantee that this Jotunheim incursion will end anything like the last. Tony gets the sinking feeling that daddy Odin will probably flay him alive if they’re caught… and they probably will be.

It’s too quiet.

Tony has far too much time to think. He tries to distract himself with work, pushes his mind and his body to their absolute limits. Regardless, green eyes follow him around as though they were set into the walls of his room, cold and dark and judging. He hates himself because he’s let himself care. He hates Loki because the bastard never even gave him a moment to react, to salvage what he possibly could.

He hates himself because with every passing moment the past seems less and less real, like a particularly vivid dream that fades when reality takes over. He tries to remember Pepper’s smile but it’s all hazy and drenched in regret. When he thinks of the Avengers he remembers the moments in-between, the laughter and the lack of loneliness that was dearer than any treasure he’d ever owned or invention he’s brought into being. He remembers only the best things and he misses them so much that he has to take a moment, a deep breath to steady his emotions. Funny how you never take the time to appreciate the things you have until they’re gone.

He thinks of Thor, Prince of Asgard and in his heart Tony resolves to do anything, _everything_ to protect him. Somehow, now that his past is in the past, all he can remember of the large-and-in-charge blonde hunk is just how much of a _friend_ he was. Thor never judged, never pretended to be more than he was, never expected more from others than they had given him already. Tony thinks back to just how _easy_ it had been to talk to Thor, to forget about how complicated things were for just a little. He remembers the numerous movie nights and evenings hunched over the bar with a glass of whisky when the only person that had bothered to keep him company was a freaking alien _God_. They had never had that much to talk about but really, it hadn’t ever mattered. Thor listened.

He thinks of the time stone, locked away in a library on a planet that barely seems real anymore and decides to find it even if there’s no hope of using it to set things back to the way they were.

He thinks of Loki and stops.

Damn.

See, here’s the thing: Loki’s kind of made himself a permanent fixture in Tony’s mind. It’s not just because Tony feels more than a little attracted to the bastard- he’s pretty comfortable with his generally overactive libido and the situations it gets him into. It’s just that… Loki is the cause of and solution to his predicament. Loki is the only person that understands why Tony is where he is, that knows he has a stake in the outcome, that seems to have been willingly participating in making everything right.

Loki is the only one that Tony could talk to and _feel_ like he had someone to talk to. He needs the intelligence, the snark, the comfort of company which seems to effortlessly fill the cracks in Tony’s broken soul as though it was always meant to be there.

Loki has become someone Tony… misses.

Aw shit.

It doesn’t really matter, not anymore. Loki’s just as broken as Tony’s ever been and he may have just pushed the Trickster far enough to have him shatter into a million pieces, just like in the original timeline. Maybe Loki was destined for nothing but disappointment, pain and destruction and Tony was a fool to even entertain the notion of changing something. If only he’d _known_ what Loki had really been going through, maybe then…

Ha, who’s he kidding anyway. Tony would have failed regardless. He’s not some therapist- he couldn’t even keep a hold of the one woman in his life that had actually _meant_ something. Sex had always been easy in the same way that making out with Loki was easy. The moment Tony decided he wanted something… different, was when the chance to actually have it disappeared.

Oh. Well yeah, he does want _something_.

The bastard’s just good company, that’s all. Good company he really needs right now. Good, magic-powered and intelligent company he’s probably lost forever.

Tony ignores all of the above and tinkers with the heating in his suit instead. He’ll probably need that function above all others when they get to Jotunheim.

Better mixed emotions have tried and failed to take him down in the past.

Soon enough, the warmth of the Asgardian sun melts away to leave the soft coolness of Asgardian night. Tony’s heartbeat is staccato; his blood rush is deafening. His eyes dart to the door every few seconds and he has to force himself not to pace around the room like a lunatic.

Needless to say it’s almost a relief by the time he hears silent footsteps echoing outside the door, moments before it flings open with an intense sort of attempt at being quiet. It’s quintessential Thor: stealth and enough decibels to deafen an army combined into a single person-shaped container.

Tony flicks his wrist and feels the suit glue itself to his limbs piece by piece, the beauty of his own invention never failing to elicit a smile, even if it’s more of a grimace at this point.

“Hey there Big Guy.”

“Man of Iron.” Thor says, stepping through the door with a wide grin. “I see that you are eager to prove yourself in the field of battle. I have never seen armour like yours before.”

“Let’s get this show on the road.”

He’s tingling with a strange sort of excitement and he recognises it as being a product of having been locked up in a confining space for too long. He misses action, battle- whatever-you-want-to-call-it. Iron Man has always been defined by _doing_ , not by standing-by and waiting. He might not approve of invading a foreign realm due to what are basically unfounded and racist reasons, but he’s still itching to punch something in the face.

Thor clasps his shoulder and pushes him forward down the corridor.

“Sif, Hogun, Fandral and Volstagg are waiting for us at the bridge. I have a favour to incur with Heimdall. It shouldn’t take us more than an hour to walk there.”

Tony grins.

“Not sure I have the patience, Point Break.”

With that he lets his faceplate snap into place and fires up his repulsors, checking to gauge Thor’s reaction. It’s is as satisfyingly confused as he wanted it to be.

“I say we race.” He quips before doubling back and shooting straight through the window of his week-long prison.

He doesn’t bother to look back to check if Thor’s following him- there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that the blonde mountain of muscle wouldn’t rise to the occasion to compete. Sure enough, about five seconds into his reactor-powered dash he sees the bright flash of a lightning-coloured streak stream past him.

Damn, Thor’s hammer is a pretty impressive bit of magic now that he thinks about it.

There isn’t much time to think though, because Tony’s not ready to lose. He dials up the propulsion systems and blasts into supersonic speed, barely managing a smile as he shoots past the hammer-wielding bodybuilder to head towards the colourful snake of light in the far distance. He just about manages to key in the command to slow down before he’s shot past the start of the Rainbow bridge and focuses on landing with a satisfying _thunk_.

Thor lands next to him a second later but Tony’s far too busy surveying the damn view.

 _Motherfucker_. He thinks, taking in the breath-taking vista of Asgard. This should never get old. No matter how messed up this whole time-space-travel thing is, Tony can’t quite get over the fact that he’s in a different _realm_. And this realm is fucking gorgeous.

“Impressive!” Thor bellows, walking over to slam his bear-paw-like hand on Tony’s shoulder. “I do not understand why my brother worried about your well-being. This technology of yours is a formidable weapon indeed! That is not to say that it would hold up against Mjolnir of course.”

“I was worried about his _mortality_ , Thor.” A quiet voice drifts from somewhere outside Tony’s vision.

He turns so fast he’s actually impressed that he doesn’t get whiplash.

“Brother.” Thor says and his voice cracks a little. Tony wonders about what his own voice might sound like if he could make a single sound.

“Oh stop it you simpering fool.” Loki says dismissively, avoiding Tony’s gaze so expertly that it may as well be an art. “I wasn’t going to let you go off and get killed by Frost Giants without bearing witness.”

Thor takes two large strides and engulfs Loki in a hug so crushing that Tony can just about feel his own bones crack just by watching them. He doesn’t really register it though because his brain has already left this particular plane of existence.

His mouth hangs open and it’s like a betrayal. Tony wants to say a million things but he can’t seem to squeeze out a single vowel- not a sound as his own genius mind plays catch-up with his indecipherable emotions.

 _Where the hell have you been? I’m so glad to see you, I never thought I’d… I know you think you’ve messed up but you haven’t, because I’m here to make sure you never will. And_ what the fuck _, Loki, if there was ever anyone that deserved to go off the deep end it would be you so just… hang in there and let me fix this. I need you there, **sane**. I need you to hang in there, _ please _._

Thor is babbling already so Tony gives silence his most valiant effort.

It’s not like he knows what to say. And Loki seems to be treating him like a Tony-shaped lump of empty space anyway. The whole thing feels like it will only be made worse by an attempt at conversation.

“… I never doubted you, brother.” Thor says as they march towards the mysterious end of the Rainbow Bridge. “This is almost like that time in Vanaheim when you found that elf-friend of yours and didn’t show up to the main battle until everything seemed lost. You always did have a flair for the dramatic…”

Loki’s presence is like a bath of tar, all-consuming and suffocating all at once. Tony’s blood is fire and there doesn’t seem to be any way of extinguishing it. The sharp line of Loki’s jaw is a blade and it cuts deeper than he can handle as long as the God of Mischief’s eyes remain cold and dull and empty, refusing to acknowledge him.

Tony wants…

He’s not sure what he wants, but it’s definitely too much.

Lucky for him, soon enough a distraction in the shape of Sif and the Warriors Three presents itself when they stop before the doors of a what Tony assumes to be the gateway between realms he’s heard so much about. The ball-shaped structure is almost comical and he stifles a giggle. It’s likely just a strange version of hysterics that his brain resorts to at this point.

He’s vaguely aware of the look of disdain both he and Loki receive from Sif, of the comments that are made at his expense. All he can think about is the sharp, green angles of limbs and shoulders before his eyes, angles he didn’t think he’d ever really get to see again.

And that’s the thing, isn’t it? Loki had disappeared with such finality that having him reappear just as suddenly is like a punch in the gut. Tony doesn’t really know what to do with all of it.

Then they’re facing a tall, badass-looking man with golden eyes and a giant sword that makes Tony’s spine tingle and for a moment he just about forgets everything else. The room is bathed in a golden light and the man’s helmet is a statement if there ever was one and his voice booms like the millions of years of eternity that stretch out from the moment of the Big Bang:

“You’re not dressed warmly enough.”

Sif actually splutters.

What follows is what can barely be called a negotiation. Heimdall-- apparently the name of whatever cosmic entity that can catapult them through the many realms of the universe-- seems to already have his mind made up about letting them pass. He sounds frustrated about the incursion and Tony is reminded of the fact that Loki was the reason it happened in the first place. He pinches his lips shut as the conversation takes place even when Heimdall’s eyes glance over to pierce him down to his very bones.

“What of the mortal?” he asks and Tony has half a mind to show him just what this _mortal_ can do.

“He is a shieldbrother.” Thor says with such conviction that Hogun’s eyes widen and Sif’s narrow. “He shall aid us in our quest.”

Loki doesn’t even twitch but somehow, Tony thinks his entire frame tightens a little like a bowstring. Heimdall merely nods, not taking his eyes off Tony.

“Be warned. I shall honour my sworn oath to protect this realm as its gate-keeper. If your return threatens the safety of Asgard, the Bifrost will remain closed.”

Heimdall slides the sword into its intended slot in the centre of the room. Lightning sparks off in ever direction and the circle-patterned walls around them begin to twist and spin like a crazed merry-go-round. Tony can barely decide which direction to look in as awe overtakes every nerve-ending in his body.

“I have no plans to die today.” Thor says, smiling.

“None do.” Heimdall replies as he twists the sword in its lock.

It’s at that moment that Tony’s gaze seeks out Loki again and he finds himself locking eyes with the Trickster.

 _That’s right you bastard_ , he thinks, _you’re going to have to acknowledge this. You can’t keep running away from shit like a damn coward._

Out loud all he manages is:

“Loki—“

And then his mind gets ripped from his soul which gets ripped from his body which is flying a million miles a second through what he can only describe as a tunnel of colour and light and everything smells of ozone and then—

Then they land.

Tony collapses on his knees and he’s vaguely aware of just how cold everything feels all of a sudden, of the crunch of snow beneath his suit. He breathes in and the ice in the air seeps straight into his lungs.

“Welcome to Jotunheim.” Loki whispers.


	15. Hot-headed, Ice-cold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off, I'm sorry for not replying to all of the comments, I do read them all and adore any and all feedback. Life is pretty hectic right now and the only reason I'm writing this is because this story has a life of its own.
> 
> It's a slightly shorter chapter and I'm SUPER SORRY about the cliffhanger. It will pay off in a big way, I swear. I get to play around with Tony/Loki parallels and emotional hang-ups soon! So excited.
> 
> Again, the amount of love the last chapter received was unreal and I hope that this one proves that I'll continue to work to make it be merited. <3

Tony staggers to his feet, head spinning so intensely that he can’t quite focus his eyes on a single object around him (not that he could anyway, it’s pretty much pitch-black except for some unspecified moon-like glow from somewhere in the sky). He’s a little nauseous at first, but soon a creeping, overpowering sensation of _cold_ eclipses any dizziness left over from their rainbow space-hop.

Within moments his bones feel like icicles. He wonders if moving his arm might shatter it into infinite crystalline pieces. The air he breathes burns his lungs like a million sharp icy needles despite the helmet’s filtration system. Tony clenches his teeth and grunts out a command to increase the suit’s heating to its highest setting. The relief that washes over his already-burning skin is instant, if painful.

The Asgardians barely even flinch at the change in temperature.

He takes that short moment of clarity to observe his surroundings:  a rocky, icy terrain that envelops the group with walls of dark stone. At first the rocky formations appear natural, but as Tony looks on the entire picture begins to take on a sense of purpose, like the walls of ancient ruins. There is a shape to the whole thing, an intelligent vision of structure and as his eyes adjust to the twilight darkness, he can just about make out the shapes of what look like decorative columns and arches.

Thor takes a step forward and the entire group follows as though in a trance. Tony’s eyes seek out Loki. The bastard still has his back turned to him.

“You’ve come a long way to die, Asgardians.” A dark, grinding voice echoes from the shadows and everyone stops as if they’d hit an invisible wall. Tony’s eyes strain to adjust to the darkness and he finally zeroes in on a _ridiculously_ tall, shadowy figure sat on what looks like a throne about a hundred metres ahead of them. The creature’s eyes glint bright crimson red as he blinks and surveys the group of invaders.

“How did your people get into Asgard?” Thor snarls.

The frost giant is silent for a moment and then he angles his eyes down, sweeping his gaze over all their faces before pausing, his expression unreadable.

“The House of Odin is full of traitors.”

“Do not besmirch my fath—“

Thor’s reply is cut short by the whizz of a dagger and the crackle of ice as it is stopped mid-flight mere moments before it buries itself inside the chest of Jotunheim’s king. The frost giant hisses and suddenly they are surrounded by an army of dark blue, red-eyed ogres, towering menacingly over them in every corner of the hall.

Not a single Asgardian pays them more than a passing glance. Their eyes are all fixated on Loki, who looks calm as a fucking cucumber despite having just openly assaulted the ruler of Jotunheim, his arm still outstretched in the direction where he’d tossed the blade.

“It is the House of Laufey you should worry about.” he says.

Thor chokes.

“You dare try to kill me after all that you have already done to your own people? Treachery truly does run in your blood, Odinsson.” Laufey growls, standing up.

“It does.” Loki replies. “But I am no son of Odin.”

Then the whole universe takes a deep breath and… goes straight to hell.

Loki disappears, popping back up right in front of Laufey who gives a thundering roar and swipes at the Trickster. Loki teleports away a small distance before summoning up an entire dozen copies of himself to surround the king. Tony’s so engrossed in the action that he barely even notices the giant blue army that’s suddenly hurtling towards their landing party with impressive momentum.

He fires up his suit and shoots into the sky, barely escaping a blast of ice missiles thrown his way by an oncoming Jotun warrior.

“Thor, we have to get out of here!”

There’s no guarantee that Odin will pull them out of this situation like in the last timeline and he’d be quite happy to not be turned into a human-flavoured popsicle just now, thank you very much.

“No, we must stand and fight!” the blond man bellows, sending his hammer straight through five towering blue enemies without a moment’s pause. “Loki is right, they must answer for what the have done!”

“Oh for the love of—“

Tony gets interrupted by a giant mace, which misses his helmet by mere centimetres and only because he has the well-trained instinct to flinch out of the way on time.

Thor can’t seriously be pretending he didn’t just hear Loki confess to not being Odin’s son, can he?

 Then again the prince has displayed enough wilful ignorance with respect to his brother in the past to make it believable and Loki proclaiming crazy falsehoods to the general public is a signature move at this point, so maybe it’s not that strange after all. It doesn’t make Tony’s life any easier.

“We’re going to _die_ you idiot.”

“The mortal is right, Thor, we cannot beat an army of Frost Giants! We did not come here to start a war!” Sif yells and for the first time in his life Tony feels the slightest bit of respect for the woman.

Their efforts are in vain however as there isn’t a moment’s break to even consider running away. Tony fires off a few repulsor blasts at one of the Jotuns as he springs up again, rocketing into the atmosphere before a spear pierces the air where he’d been hovering not a second ago. He takes a moment to look over to the throne where Loki and Laufey are nothing but a mess of magical flashes and ice.

Jesus Christ, it’s Loki’s fucking _father_. Tony might have daddy issues but this is on a whole other level. It also complicates things because this is nothing like what happened in the original timeline, if Thor’s stories were to be believed. Tony has no way of knowing whether or not any of them will come out of this alive.

And if there’s one thing Tony knows, it’s that he doesn’t plan to die in this frozen wasteland, not while the rest of the Avengers are still out there somewhere.

The moment he thinks that, he hears a _whoosh_ and suddenly his back feels a couple degrees colder than it was seconds before. He turns around to see a stunned looking frost giant warrior stood below him.  The creature growls and pulls out a massive bow with an arrow the size of a javelin.

“Your magic tricks will do you no good here, Asgardian.” He says, pulling on the bowstring and aiming straight for Tony’s head.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to let it go, Elsa.”

A tiny missile connects with the warrior’s shoulder and explodes, making him drop the bow and howl in rage and pain. Tony doesn’t waste any time in trying to get as close to the throne as possible, diving out of the way of multiple flying chunks of ice and other not-so-pleasant looking projectiles.

He manages to scan the battlefield as he goes. Thor is absolutely mowing down frost giants with his hammer. The other four aren’t doing so well. Sif seems to be holding her own but Fandral’s slowly being overwhelmed by the sheer number of enemies while Volstagg and Hogun look fairly panicked despite still being on top of things. Tony winces when a Jotun blade goes straight through Volstagg’s left biceps and the man roars in pain.

They need to end this, soon.

“Loki!” he yells, zig-zagging through the air with the kind of grace Natasha would be proud of. The God of Mischief doesn’t react, but then he seems to be way too busy trying not to get struck by a blast of bright blue light. Laufey’s face is painted with rage.

Tony activates his shoulder cannon as he approaches and locks onto the frost giant’s head. He’s not too keen to set off an inter-realm political fiasco by killing off the ruler of Jotunheim, but with things the way they are, he’d rather risk it if it means they all get out of this alive.

He powers up and sends a blast in the direction of the duel. It strikes Laufey in the back and the creature howls before turning to face Tony.

“I WILL TEAR YOU APART UNTIL NOTHING BUT THE STENCH OF YOUR BLOOD REMAINS IN MY KINGDOM!” he screeches, tall and terrible.

Huh, maybe Howard’s not as bad as Tony remembers. Perspective really does change things.

“Stay out of this, Stark.” Loki warns coolly.

“Oh, so we’re done pretending I don’t exist?”

Loki knots his brows, about to reply but then Laufey’s hands lifts and suddenly Tony’s chest is engulfed in bright, crackling blue light.

It’s so fucking _cold_.

And yet it doesn’t seem to do anything. Tony looks down and sees the blast get sucked away into nothingness, as though his suit is absorbing it. Sure, it’s cold- but not completely unbearable. He looks up, confused, and sees both Laufey and Loki staring at him- though Loki’s expression is leaning slightly towards smugness.

Oh. _Oh_. The uru, the _runes_.

Then Laufey’s confusion changes to a smirk and it’s probably the one expression that makes him actually look a little like his son.

“I do not need magic to kill you.” he says. Then he plunges his hand into the stone and draws a long, gleaming blue sword straight from its obsidian depths.

“Aw shit.”

Tony launches himself into the air moments before the gleaming weapon slices through the air where he’d been standing. Loki throws another dagger but Laufey deflects it without a moment’s hesitation and sends it clattering against the wall.

“You are nothing, boy.” He says, advancing upon Loki. “Your magic is mere trickery, your weapons weak, Asgardian steel. You are not a warrior.”

“I am your son.” Loki growls, although it’s obvious he’s tired and backed into a corner.

Laufey pauses for a moment but then he smiles.

“Perhaps.”

Then he swings his sword so quickly that Tony barely even registers it. Loki dives out of the way—too slow. The sword’s tip slices through Loki’s side and the God of Mischief cries out.

Tony doubles back and launches himself at the giant but Laufey is ready for him. He swings his arm—how is he so fucking _fast_ —and smashes into Iron Man, sending him flying back over the entire battlefield again.

The suit’s still holding up alright but Tony’s brain is more than a little rattled. He finally manages to stop himself from spinning and looks back out at the action.

Loki’s on the ground. Shit, Loki’s hunched up _on the ground_. Laufey’s standing above him and it’s pretty much an execution at this point. The Jotun lifts his sword and Tony’s _too far away_. Neither he nor anything he could fire would get there on time, much less on target.

He fires up everything he’s got, every ounce of power stored in the reactor. Hell, his suit can go supersonic if he needs it to. He needs it now. His eyes are trained on Loki and he _can’t_ let it end this way. Loki deserves better. He needs to protect him. He needs to get there on time to—

There is a bright flash and then…

And then there’s pain. It starts in his right lung and then spreads like wildfire and it’s so intense it’s _unbearable_. Tony can’t remember the last time he was in this much agony, not since Obadiah ripped the reactor out of his chest and left him for dead.

Dead. Oh, yeah.

There’s a massive sword sticking out of his chest. It’s weird because there’s no way he could have made it here this quick, there’s _no way_. He hears a sharp intake of breath and looks up to see Loki’s wide eyes staring at the tip of Laufey’s sword which is bright crimson red.

As Tony watches, the pain suddenly intensifies (and that’s just not fair). The blade slides backwards and out of his sight and suddenly Tony feels incredibly cold. He tries to breathe in and finds that he can’t really do it. His throat seizes and he coughs, spitting blood all over the icy, rocky ground beneath.

He collapses onto his knees which have apparently forgotten how to work.

“You fool.” Loki whispers.

Tony thinks: _you could at least be fucking grateful_.

Then, as it turns out, there is a merciful limit to the amount of pain a human body can endure and suddenly everything is black.

///

_Damn you, Tony Stark._

///


	16. Where is My Mind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's out pretty damn quick. That's because the story's possessed me and you've all made me do it. Thank you for the immeasurably amazing feedback <3 
> 
> Sorry for all the exposition, I needed to get as much of it out as I could before I went insane. Emotional things yet to come. SO MUCH EMOTION.
> 
> At the same time I think the next chapter might be a little more exposition too, but in a more fun way. 
> 
> Enjoy!

Tony opens his eyes.

No, wait, that can’t be right. The last thing he remembers is being dead. Or, well, getting skewered by a giant icy sword, but at this point it’s all just semantics.

It’s dark though, dark and cold and strangely quiet. He can’t see a thing.

Right, he must be dead because the pain is gone. The agony he’d been in before passing out is not the sort of thing you can just forget or get over in a matter of…

How _long_ has he been dead for anyway?

“If you think any harder you _will_ end up dead from the sheer effort of it.”

Tony blinks and suddenly Loki’s there, all pale and worn and half-crazed, just like in the good old days.

“ _You_.”

Loki smiles, but it’s the least genuine expression Tony’s ever seen. The engineer takes a step forward and suddenly his own body is visible too, like someone’s removed an impenetrable shroud that had been covering his limbs. Now it’s just the two of them, standing before one another in a never-ending universe of black, as If they’re the only things that ever have or ever will exist.

“Yes. I’d rather hoped you hadn’t forgotten me.”

“You _bastard_. I spent hours trying to get you to talk to me and you show up _now_ , when it’s all over and done with?” Tony grits out. He’s furious in a way he can’t ever remember being.

“I suppose it might seem that way.” Loki sighs. “I’ve run out of time.”

“ _You_ have? I’m the one that’s _dead_. I guess this is your way of hijacking the last moments of my life just to drive home how much of a failure I am. Well I don’t give a flying f—“

“You’re not dead, you’re _dying_ because your idiotic subconscious is as stupidly heroic as your waking mind and uru sometimes channels my magic without my particular input. I plan to fix the dying part, since circumstances seem to leave me with no other choice. If there is one thing this entire experience has shown me, it is that I am not one for predicting the future. Or, well, the past.”

“Oh _fuck you_.”

Tony’s done. He’s just done. Whatever lies Loki wants to throw in his face this time, he’s not buying it anymore.

“This is all very pleasant.” Loki says and finally his eyes glint a little with familiar, faint amusement. “But we are both _very_ much out of time. I suppose I have been putting it off long enough for the sake of my own pride and a false sense of hope but it’s obvious that unless I stop you bleeding out sometime soon, even the smallest of my victories will soon be undone and this entire effort will have been for nothing.”

“Quit acting like there was ever any chance of anything working in the first place.”

Loki sighs again. Tony pauses for a moment and tries to calm down, sensing that his own emotions are way into overdrive. He doesn’t really understand what’s going on but he’s _angry_ and too overwhelmed by the image of Laufey’s sword in his gut to be able to think beyond it.

“… Alright.” He says. “Do enlighten me what you’re planning to do next because frankly, I have no idea where we are or what’s going on right now. I should be _dead_ and from what I gather this is the Universe’s warped version of my own personal purgatory.”

“Well, seeing as we are still in your own mind, I would not disagree.”

Loki pauses for a moment and Tony can almost see him struggle, like it’s an effort to even stay solid. The Trickster takes a deep breath and clenches his fists, his eyes trained on the ground with exhausted intensity.

“I suppose this was never going to be the magnum opus of my schemes, but I am impressed by exactly how much it has grown out of my own control. Then again, no one to my knowledge has attempted attaching a piece of their soul to another being for longer than a few hours. And certainly, no one ever combined such a feat with time travel.”

“Well done, I’ll put in a good word on your behalf for the Nobel prize for Magical Fuckery.”

Loki’s lips twitch. It’s almost like he’s not even pretending to be an evil villain anymore.

“I was always aware that there were too many variables for me to possibly control. I used up obscene amounts of magic as soon as we arrived: revealing my ancestry to my younger self, tugging at the minds of Odin and my mother to influence their reaction to your appearance and to my counterpart’s new knowledge. They were small things, but necessary. The fact that no one would ever suspect a mortal to be able to use mind-influencing magic was only ever a benefit for me.”

Loki pauses and lifts his eyes to meet Tony’s.

“I am a selfish creature. My goal was never to save the world. If I could protect my past self, my mother and destroy those that had caused me pain, it would be enough. All I want even now, is simply to rip Thanos apart, limb from bloody limb.”

Ah, Thanos. The name that keeps on popping up like a Bad Omen Whack-a-mole.

“Yeah, I gathered you’re the best of friends.”

Loki’s eyes are fire. Tony’s never seen him look this pissed or this terrifying. He begins to worry that this might be the end of their conversation, but then Loki takes a deep, shuddering breath.

“Thanos is the reason I attacked Midgard.”

_Space. Emptiness. Death. We are helpless. We can’t fight this._

**_I_ ** _can’t fight this._

“I was angry, I wanted revenge. He used that to get inside my head. He tortured me until I could barely remember where I came from or who I was, until all I could do was scream and all I could feel was the rage that I had awoken the night the Bifrost was destroyed. Then all he had to do was push- just the smallest nudge with the Mind Stone- and I was his to command. It was not until your Green Beast so elegantly counteracted the enchantment that I could regain my mental faculties, if only a little.”

“So you were under his control the whole time?” Tony blurts, caught somewhere between shock and suspicion and a confusing amount of sudden appreciation for the Hulk. “Why the hell didn’t you use that in your trial?”

Loki chuckles darkly.

“You’ve met Odin. It did not matter that I was innocent; I needed to be punished, for it to be seen as a show of his strength. No one in Asgard would stand up for me. You know that too, now.”

Tony thinks back to Sif and Fandral and Volstagg and Hogun and the way they treated Loki. Shit. He can imagine just how well Loki blaming some weird cosmic creature for his actions would have gone down after everything that had happened. Thor wouldn’t be in a great position to speak up for him either.

“That’s not…” Tony grimaces. “Right, life sucks. I’ve gathered that Shakespearean tragedy is the blueprint of your life.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore. What matters is what you have to do now.”

“ _I_ have to—“

“Yes.” Loki hisses and he looks even more exhausted, if that were possible. “ _You_. Because this is the last you will see of me, this version of me at least and I suspect you will only be happier for it. It would have been different if my own thoughts had not bled through in all the wrong moments, to be witnessed by all the wrong witnesses. It would have been different if you were not currently in need of all of my remaining energy in order to survive a stab wound. It would have been different if you had not—“

Loki cuts himself off and steps forward to grab Tony’s t-shirt and pull him in, his wild green eyes searching the engineer’s brown ones with a slightly crazed fervour. Instantly, Tony’s mind throws him headfirst into the memory of Loki’s – younger, marginally saner Loki’s – lips on his, and he has to clench his fists. It’s not a pleasant throwback, not with all the darkness emanating from the Loki that’s currently clenching his shirt. The two images are a contradiction.

“I did not expect you to be…” Loki begins and then releases his grip, stepping back slowly, with something like regret in his features. “I expected you to be determined enough to kill Thanos and intelligent enough to not lose your head in this timeline. I knew you to understand my past self better than the others might have. The rest was… unexpected. A failure on my part.”

“I think your other self might disagree.” Tony quips, but almost immediately his own comment sounds crass and leaves a bad taste in his mouth. Loki’s expression is a torrent of emotion. He looks at Tony like he wants to strangle him and devour him at the same time.

“It matters not.” He says, finally, his shoulders shaking slightly. “If you want to be a hero and save the universe, as you’ve been known to do, then you must focus. You must find Thanos and _exterminate_ him. I’ve had some time to think on how to do that.”

“I still don’t know who the guy is.” Tony says, largely because he doesn’t want to stop and think about what this Loki’s mess of emotions actually _means_.

“The story of the Mad Titan will mean less to you than the fact both his goals and his methods will cause unspeakable damage to the population of the Universe, including your Earth and Asgard. Revenge may be my recipe, but you have just as much cause to wish him dead.”

Tony opens his mouth, ready to bring up Loki’s impressive history of lying, but then he _remembers_.

He remembers the giant being sat on an obsidian throne from his hijacked dreams. He remembers the screams and the pleas and the terror on Loki’s part, the husk of a man that resulted from it all. This Loki may be a cold, manipulative bastard, but the emotions were too… visceral to create without having actually lived them. Not even Loki could pretend to have been _this_ broken for the sake of making Tony kill the guy.

There’s also something to be said about the giant hive mind army that poured out of a hole in the sky onto the population of New York. Loki might not be the only one with revenge on his mind.

Said demigod must sense the shift in Tony’s thinking because he continues:

“In this timeline, Thanos has yet to begin planning the attack on Midgard and this time he will not have me be his tool- I should hope. I would tell you his exact plans but he did not share much and the rest… my mind was not present enough to reconstruct. All I can really give you is a means by which to kill him once you meet him.”

Tony shudders. There’s nothing more disturbing he can imagine than not being in control of his own mind.

“… You will need Thor.” 

Loki's face is a grimace. Tony gapes.

“Wow, you must really hate this Thanos guy.”

“Indeed.” Loki sighs. “There are not many things that can defeat him. You will need a God’s weapon and a God to wield it. I have held Gungnir in my hand and though it pains me to admit it, I could never access its full powers. Of all creatures is the Nine Realms that we could convince, Odin and Thor are the best to stand a chance against the Mad Titan. Odin, however, will not listen. Believe me, I have tried.”

“So what, we get Thor to Hammertime him out of existence and we’re done?”

“Mjolnir will not be enough. You will need to build something better, something more powerful.”

_Geez, what’s with this constant Asgardian levelling-up?_

“How much horsepower are we talking about?”

“Whatever the dwarves of Nidavellir can offer.”

Tony stares.

“The who in the what now?”

“The dwarven forge in—“

Tony doesn’t get to hear the rest of the sentence because suddenly his body is _agony_. He loses sight of Loki for a moment and everything is black and he wants to scream but his body is frozen and he can’t escape the sensation but it’s _unbearable_ —

—and then he’s back, panting harshly in the darkness of his mind and Loki’s bent over him, holding Tony’s face in his pale hands. For just the shortest breath Tony can see pure panic on Loki’s face, but then he blinks and it’s schooled into an expression of slight annoyance.

“Go to Nidavellir, Stark.”

“But—you—“ Tony chokes, still reeling from the pain and disorientation.

“You are insufferably stubborn for a mortal.” Loki whispers. “I cannot have you but I will not lose you. Be sure not to lose _me_.”

Then Tony blacks out.

\\\\\

Minutes, hours, _days_ later, he wakes up.

It’s cold. Everything hurts, especially a very persistent bit of his chest where Laufey’s game of Pin the Sword on the Tony made its spectacular conclusion.

The pain is bearable though, compared to his previous momentary torment. Tony still chooses to spend his first few waking seconds cursing Laufey and medieval magical weaponry and Jotunheim’s climate before he attempts to focus on anything in his surroundings.

His helmet’s been removed and he can just about feel the layer of ice building up on his beard and eyebrows, though the rest of the suit’s still on and still heating him up. The temperature’s not nearly as bad as it was when they’d first landed though and Tony’s not about to start hating on small victories. Small victories are all he has right now.

He grunts and attempts to move his arm with some mild success. It’s dark, but that same vague, moonlight-like glow from when they’d first landed is present, illuminating his surroundings. It looks _a lot_ like a cave. He strains every screaming muscle to its absolute limit and manages to push himself up onto his elbows, surveying the scene.

Did they leave him for dead? What the hell is this cave thing all about anyway? There doesn’t seem to be anyone around, but he notices what _definitely_ looks like the remnants of a fire, though if there was ever smoke, the smell is long gone.

“L—Loki!” he coughs and then decides to never try to use his vocal chords again.

There’s no answer.

 _Fuck_.

What is he supposed to do with all of that anyway? _I cannot have you but I will not lose you._ What a bastard. Tony’s _not_ going to start dissecting the mind of a demigod who decided to throw him several years into the past in order to save himself and kill an alien, he’s _not_.

But what did Loki _mean_ by that?

Tony doesn’t really do emotions (Pepper can attest to that) but he’s not stupid either. It’s clear that he’s dug himself a deep hole with this whole Asgardian family drama. Whatever it is, Loki’s been affected by it and that’s just… strange. Tony can’t help but think of evil Loki as a being outside of the realms of any sort of understanding, including his own. The guy's an ancient, thousand-year-old God who's travelled through galaxies and realms and can do magic and shit. Self-destructive physical attraction aside, Loki’s mind is not something to be taken lightly and…

… And the Loki in his mind is gone, forever.

That’s what he said, right? He’d save Tony’s life and disappear. Sure, he’s left a mile-long list of chores, including the defeat of what sounds like an unstoppable force of nature, but the fact remains that whatever tentative connection Tony still had to his old life has now abandoned him, permanently, after basically confessing—

Nope. Not going there. Just… not going there right now.

Dwarves, magic hammers and mad titans aside, Tony needs to _survive_. Being stuck in a cave on an icy planet filled with magical overpowered enemies while barely mobile is not exactly his version of safety. He’ll have to—

“Stark.”

The voice he hears is incredulous and Tony’s own breath stops on its way down to his lungs. He chokes.

Loki ( because of _fucking_ course it is) steps closer from the darkness of the cavern and stops, his whole body blue, his eyes crimson and his entire frame tense like he’s come face to face with a panther in the jungle.

Tony lets his head fall back down to the ground with a _thunk_.

“Well this is awkward.”


	17. Not a Therapist

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEY GUYS. Sorry I've been gone for (chuckle) 3 months?
> 
> I did honestly finish a Masters' degree in the mean time though. Did well in it and everything. Also I'm hunting PhDs and things. It takes time?
> 
> I hope that fics like these will erase some of the sorrow of Endgame <3 I'll try to keep up the writing pace a little now that I'm more free. I love you all for the support and the kudos and the comments, they are honestly amazing motivators.
> 
> (Apologies if you've forgotten what had happened in the story. I am a terrible writer.)

“You are alive.”

“Yeah, I’m just stubborn like that.”

Loki’s tone is level but Tony can just about feel air molecules in the cave struggle against the overpowering wave of tension that emanates from the suddenly-blue God of Mischief. Tony attempts a little shrug but then his abdomen decides to remind him of his _very near_ -death experience with a sizzling flare of agony, as though someone’s suddenly pressing a burning branding iron against his skin. He yelps and clenches his jaw, his vision blurring for a few moments before he wills everything back into focus.

Loki’s face surfaces, closer than before. The demigod’s hand is outstretched, like he’d been about to touch Tony, but before he has time to register it the hand is pulled away, so quickly that he can’t be sure it had been there in the first place.

“Right, let’s never do that again.” Tony grunts.

“How?”

The engineer stares up at Loki’s crimson-drenched eyes.

“I’m glad you’re so happy to see that I’m not dead.” He says, trying to stem an unhelpful wave of irritation that begins to rise from the pit of his stomach. “It’s not like I saved your life or anything.”

Loki clenches his jaw and looks away from Tony.

“Yours was beyond saving.”

_Oh_ , Tony thinks, because Loki’s unspoken words practically scream “ _I tried **everything**_ ”.

He does push himself up then, grunting as he crawls over to one of the cave walls to lean against it, the demigod’s eyes following him every step of the way. He successfully avoids straining his (apparently) still-not-completely-healed abdomen stab-wound and is just about ready to collapse back to the ground and fall asleep by the time he’s propped up and comfortable.

“Your other self said he had plans for me.” Tony finally says, after catching his breath. “So he used up all of his magic to fix me up.” _And I think our make-out session might have done a number on him but I’m not going to tell you that._

Loki’s eyebrows shoot up momentarily before he schools his face to Jotun-blue neutrality.

“I see.”

“On the note of surviving impossible things,” Tony adds, because he can tell that the conversation is not likely to go anywhere pleasant any time soon. “What the hell happened to the army of Ice Giants? Where’s Thor and his Idiots Three?”

He can immediately sense that those were the wrong questions to ask (not that there might have been a correct option). Loki’s grimace turns to a scowl and he clenches his fists, sharp claw-like nails gouging out the stone floor where they connect with it.

“Odin arrived soon after your half-witted heroics.” Loki grits through his teeth. “I do not need to tell you that he was not entirely pleased with the events that had occurred. He spoke with Laufey, negotiated a safe passage for Thor and his mindless cabalists after. I elected to not return to Asgard.”

“Wait what?” Tony balks. “You _what_?”

Loki, the infuriating mysterious bastard that he is, refuses to reply and Tony is left with no other choice than to ask the next worst question he can think of:

“So why are you all blue then?”

Within moments, Loki’s ice-cold grip is around Tony’s throat, his face mere inches away from his own.

“ _You_ ,” Loki practically spits. “Clearly have a death wish tonight, Anthony Stark.”

“I’m feeling lucky.” Tony grunts out. Loki’s grip loosens slightly and Tony’s eyes are watering too much to be able to make out enough of the Trickster’s face, but he can just about see Loki’s expression turn pained before the pressure on his larynx is released and he gasps for breath like a drowning man.

The cave is silent for a moment as Loki steps away, his back to Tony and his shoulders slumped. Tony struggles to catch his breath. After what seems like eternity, Loki speaks:

“You… your life was not forfeit yet, but Odin refused to take you back to Asgard. He did not feel he owed it to you to save your life.”

Tony’s eyes widen and he waits, feeling that Loki isn’t done speaking yet. After a moment, the Trickster god turns slightly, still not facing him and whispers, so quietly Tony can barely hear him:

“I could not leave you after… I did not have the strength to open the pathways between Realms, so I escaped Laufey and Odin as best I could and I took you with me. I thought I could save you still but I was wrong. I spent all of my remaining power to heal you. I even drew on the energies Odin had stored within me to change my appearance - now aware of their presence - but it was no use. Once I knew I had failed and your life was fading, I went to search for the nearest tear in the aether between Realms so that I might use it to escape Jotunheim once my energies returned.”

Tony is quiet for a moment, absorbing the fact that Loki had decided to stay for _him_.

“Thank you.” he says, finally.

Loki turns to face him and his expression is painted with surprise, all the more haunted when manifested by blood-red eyes.

“You would thank a monster.”

“Oh stop it with the self-deprecating bullshit, Loki.” Tony grits out. “You know exactly why I’m thanking you. For the record, you didn’t stay back on Jotunheim in the original timeline.”

Loki’s eyes widen further. “We came to Jotunheim in your universe?”

“Yeah. I suppose I should come clean since I’ve been a pretty shitty time-traveller so far. _And_ since this is the bit where everything diverges harder than Quantum Mechanics did from all of known Physics in the 20 th Century.”

“I had begun to doubt you.” Loki mutters and Tony winces.

“Like I’d said before, it’s not like I knew what needed changing. Evi— _other_ Loki was pretty tight-lipped about the damn thing until he realised he wasn’t going to be around anymore to mess with me. I know the future, sure, but most of what I knew concerned Earth and I doubt you really cared about our _pathetic ball of mud_.”

Loki’s eyes flash with no small amount of irritation for a moment but then he casts them downward and his shoulders slump. The change is so quick that Tony’s brain almost gets whiplash.

“My future is yours also, Iron Man. I’ve seen it in your mind. I’ve seen your memories and my fate as it is intertwined with them.”

_Aw shit_ , Tony thinks. Loki did get to see whole _“Would you like a drink”_ conversation completely out of context. Not that context would have really helped.

“Look, I’ll admit that the whole ‘throwing me out the window’ wasn’t the most endearing thing you’ve ever done. Nor was attacking my planet with an alien army or killing hundreds of innocent people or, for that matter, trying to kill your own brother, who’s a better person than you give him credit for. Don’t ever tell him I said this.”

Loki’s eyes are impossibly wide, glistening crimson and his lips are pressed into a thin line. He’s so still that for a moment he looks like a statue sculpted from blue stone – a picture of self-loathing and defeat. Something in Tony’s chest stutters. He takes a deep breath.

“You are not _him_ , Loki.” He says and captures the ice giant’s wide eyes with his, refusing to look away. “You haven’t done any of those things. The events that drove your other self to commit those crimes are not set in stone and I’m going to make sure they never happen in the first place. _That’s_ why I’m here. You don’t get to atone for someone else’s bad decisions.”

Loki trembles and Tony’s pretty sure it’s not because of the cold.

“You cannot change something so wretched, Stark. It’s painted on my skin, it’s in my blo—“

“On the note of your skin – and I’m _not_ going to spend the next two hours giving you a lecture about racism – what in the frozen-over hell happened between you and the big blue popsicle on the throne?”

Within an instant, Loki’s despairing expression twists into one of unbridled rage. Tony feels an inexplicable shiver of fear run down his spine at the sight of Loki’s inhumanly crimson irises slanted into pockets of pure hate. Then he closes them and sighs, the tension seeping out of him as quickly as it had manifested.

“I thought I could atone, at least in this. I thought if I undid all the evil that my… father had wrought, if I dealt out his punishment, then I would prove myself worthy again. He is the blood in my veins that corrodes me. I thought, perhaps, I could start fixing the mistakes of the future by removing the source of my corruption – or dying in the process.”

Then Loki smiles grimly, and – _shit_ – Tony’s heart is actually in pain right now. Maybe the arc reactor got busted in the fight and it’s one of the shards of shrapnel slowly digging into it.

“I was wrong, of course. There is no atoning and there is no way of changing who I am. I should have known when I saw your memory. I have no wish to return to Odin and continue this mad charade and my true father never wanted me. Perhaps it would have been better if I had simply died in battle, heroically, like the Aesir would have wanted. But you were wounded protecting _me_ , and I… this was truly the only good thing I could still do: to heal you. And even in that I failed.”

“I’m still here, aren’t I?” Tony asks quietly. “One way or another, it’s thanks to Loki Odinsson that I’m still breathing.”

“In your timeline, I would have _killed_ you.”

“Well I’m betting everything I own – and I own quite a lot, seeing as I’m a billionaire – that you won’t kill me this time. For someone so smart, you can be really dumb sometimes.”

Loki opens his mouth to protest but Tony can tell that he’s managed to sink his nails into the cloud of self-deprecation a little. Now he just needs to pull at it.

“Look if you really wanted to do all these terrible things, we wouldn’t be here agreeing on how they’re _bad_ and you _don’t want to do them_. The fact that your dad was a blue tyrant doesn’t mean you have to be and it doesn’t mean you have to kill him to make things better. Actually there’s apparently a different blue giant tyrant on a throne that we need to kill to make things better and I’m going to need your help with that.”

Loki’s face doesn’t seem particularly used to the expression of confusion so he manages it only halfway.

“Pardon?”

Tony grins because he’s _done it_ , he’s made the despondent Prince of Asgard forget about his self-loathing for a minute. Then he remembers his new ‘mission’ and his grin fades.

“Remember how I said that the guy responsible for the voices in my head saved my life because he had a ‘plan’ for me? Well the good news is I’m not just here to play therapist, which is great because no one wants to see the inside of _that_ padded cell. The bad news is, we kind of need to get Thor, get him a weapon from some dwarf planet and then find and kill a guy called Thanos who is the baddest bad that ever lived – apparently.”

Loki is quiet for a minute.

“Why would my future self want this _Thanos_ dead?” he asks finally and Tony breathes a sigh of relief at the lack of outright hostility.

“Well for one, he said that this guy would be responsible for damaging the population of the universe. He was also responsible for damaging _you_.”

Then Tony steels himself, props up his struggling body against the wall of the cave more comfortably and tells Loki _everything_. Or as close to it as he can.

Tony tells him about Thor’s ousting to Earth, about Loki’s attempts to take over the Throne and to finally kill his adopted brother. He tells him about the fall from the Rainbow Bridge – and then stops for a moment because Loki’s cheeks begin to glisten with quickly freezing tears. When Loki closes his eyes and nods, Tony tells him of the aftermath, of their first meeting and of a senseless, massive army raining down from the sky onto his home planet while the man that seems responsible for it all taunts the newly-formed Avengers from the top of Tony’s own tower.

“I thought you were a villain, but you were just a pawn. Thanos found you, tortured you and used the Mind Stone to control your actions. He sent his army out with you, he made you throw me out that window.”

Loki’s eyes are wide.

“I remember, in your mind… the pain of torture beneath a dark throne. That was him.”

The hardest part is conveying Frigga’s death, because Tony’s not fully aware of the whole story as much as he’d want to be and because Loki’s heart really _does_ break just then and the demigod presses his blue hand against the stone of the cave so hard that it cracks. Tony wishes more than ever that he’d be able to move, although he’s unsure what comfort he could possibly provide since Loki looks ready to destroy everything in the vicinity. When the tension diminishes slightly, Tony finishes his story with Loki’s heroic ‘death’ and perhaps-not-that-unsurprising return and time-meddling.  

By the time he’s done talking, Tony can feel his eyes droop. As much as the adrenaline kept him going for a few hours, his recovering body apparently needs a little more sleep to knit itself back together.

Loki is quiet for a long time.

“I need to think on this.” He says finally. “I see why you did not wish to tell me of my deeds without knowledge of Thanos.”

Tony nods, struggling to keep his brain from shutting down. “Yeah, and we’re not letting any of that happen again.”

Then Loki gives him a look and it’s almost – tender? Tony must be more tired than he’d suspected if he’s hallucinating things.

“Sleep, Tony Stark. I will keep us safe. We have much to accomplish still, it seems.”

And it’s strange how much Loki’s words calm him down. He almost thinks it might be the demigod’s magic. Still, he closes his eyes and within moments he’s asleep.


End file.
